Your Most Intimate Health Data Shouldn’t Be for Sale
By Dr. Noa Sterling, M.D., FACOG
There are few things more personal than your reproductive health.
The date of your last period. Whether you’re trying to conceive. The symptoms you’re experiencing. The pregnancy test you took this morning. The question you’re afraid to ask anyone else. How you’re feeling emotionally during pregnancy or postpartum.
And yet, we’ve become incredibly accustomed to entering this information into apps without really knowing what happens to it next.
For years, women have been told that the easiest way to understand their fertility is to download an app, enter their cycle information, and let an algorithm tell them what their body is doing. Many of those apps are free, which sounds great—until you start asking how a free app actually makes money.
Sometimes, your attention is the product. Sometimes, advertising is the product. And sometimes, the incredibly intimate information you enter into the app becomes valuable data.
That should matter to all of us.
It matters even more when we’re talking about reproductive health.
The Hidden Cost of “Free” Fertility and Pregnancy Apps
Think about how much a fertility or pregnancy app can potentially know about you.
The first day of your last period. Whether you’re trying to conceive. When you had sex. When you ovulated. The results of a pregnancy test. Your estimated due date. Previous pregnancies or losses. Symptoms you’re experiencing. Your mood. Your medications. Your mental health.
Piece all of that together, and you’re no longer talking about a few harmless data points.
You’re talking about an incredibly detailed picture of someone’s reproductive health.
And when an app is free, it’s worth understanding how that company makes money and what happens to the information you provide. Some digital health companies rely on advertising, analytics, partnerships, or other forms of data use to support their business models.
For something as intimate as reproductive health, I think women deserve to know exactly what they’re agreeing to.
Why We Chose Not to Put a Cycle Tracker in Obi
When I created Obi, there were a lot of features we could have added simply because other pregnancy and fertility apps had them.
Cycle tracking was one of them.
We intentionally chose not to.
Not because understanding your cycle isn’t important—it absolutely is. But I don’t believe the best way to help women understand their bodies is necessarily to collect more and more intimate data and hand them an algorithmic prediction in return.
Cycle-tracking apps can also create a false sense of precision. Bodies aren’t clocks. Ovulation doesn’t necessarily happen on the exact same day every month, and predictions can become especially unreliable when cycles are irregular or circumstances change.
I would rather teach you how your body works.
Inside Obi, we focus on evidence-based education that helps you understand ovulation, fertility, pregnancy, postpartum recovery, mental health, and the countless questions that come up along the way.
The goal isn’t to make you dependent on an app telling you what your body is doing.
The goal is to help you understand your body well enough to feel informed and confident in the decisions you make about it.
And that same philosophy shapes the way we think about AI.
What Happens to the Questions You Ask?
Pregnancy apps can know an extraordinary amount about you.
Your due date. Your last menstrual period. Whether you’re trying to conceive. Previous pregnancies or losses. Symptoms. Medications. Mental health concerns. The questions you’re asking at 2 AM because you’re scared and don’t know whether what you’re experiencing is normal.
And now, more and more women are taking those same deeply personal questions to general AI tools like ChatGPT.
That means we need to start thinking about privacy beyond the information we intentionally “track.”
The questions you type into an AI can contain health information, too.
If you ask, “I’m 24 weeks pregnant and taking this medication—is it safe?” you’ve just shared information about your pregnancy, gestational age, and medication use.
If you ask, “I’m six weeks postpartum and having intrusive thoughts—is this normal?” you’ve shared information about your postpartum status and mental health.
These aren’t just searches. They can be incredibly intimate pieces of your health story.
General-purpose AI platforms weren’t built specifically for pregnancy and postpartum care, and their data practices can differ depending on the product, account, and settings you’re using. Information you enter may be retained for a period of time, and some services may use conversations to improve their systems depending on their policies and your settings.
That matters when the conversation is about your health.
It’s also one of the reasons we built Ask Obi differently.
Ask Obi was created specifically for pregnancy and postpartum. You can ask the questions you would otherwise type into Google or a general AI chatbot and receive evidence-based information grounded in the expertise of a board-certified ObGyn—but without turning your pregnancy questions into an advertising profile or selling your health data.
Obi does not sell your health data. Your questions are not sold to advertisers or data brokers.
We believe you should be able to ask, “Is this normal?” “Is this safe?” “Should I call my doctor?” without wondering who else could benefit from knowing you asked.
Because privacy isn’t only about protecting your period dates or your due date anymore.
It’s about protecting the entire conversation you’re having about your health.
And when you Ask Obi, that principle is built into the experience from the beginning.
Obi Was Built Around a Different Question
Most pregnancy apps start by asking: What features can we build?
I started with a different question:
What do women actually need to feel supported through pregnancy and postpartum?
After years of practicing as an ObGyn—and after going through three difficult pregnancies myself—I knew the answer wasn’t another app filled with baby-size comparisons and generic weekly updates.
Women need trustworthy information.
They need somewhere to ask the questions they don’t have time to ask during a short prenatal appointment.
They need support for their mental health, not just information about their baby’s development.
They need help understanding what is normal, what deserves a call to their doctor, and what requires urgent care.
And they need all of that without wondering whether their most vulnerable moments are being turned into somebody else’s business model.
That became the foundation of Obi.
Today, Obi supports women throughout pregnancy and postpartum with evidence-based education, personalized weekly information, mental health and wellbeing support, community, and Ask Obi—our AI-powered assistant designed specifically for pregnancy and postpartum.
Privacy isn’t a feature we added afterward.
It’s part of the philosophy behind the company.
Our Promise to You
Obi doesn’t sell your health data.
We don’t build advertising profiles from the questions you ask.
We don’t fill your experience with ads because we don’t believe your pregnancy should become an opportunity for someone else to market to you.
And Ask Obi isn’t designed to keep you endlessly scrolling or replace your relationship with your healthcare team. It’s designed to help you get reliable, nuanced information when you need it—and recognize when you need care beyond an app.
That distinction matters to me.
I am an ObGyn, but I’m also a mother who remembers exactly what it felt like to be pregnant and scared. I remember searching for answers. I remember knowing the medicine and still feeling anxious when it was my pregnancy and my baby.
I built Obi because women deserve better support during one of the most medically, emotionally, and personally vulnerable periods of their lives.
And I don’t believe receiving that support should require giving up your privacy.
Your Questions Belong to You
Technology can do extraordinary things for women’s health.
AI can help us make trustworthy information available at 2 AM instead of making someone wait weeks for their next appointment. Apps can help identify changes in mental health between visits. Education can help women walk into appointments better prepared to advocate for themselves.
I believe deeply in what this technology can do.
But innovation without trust isn’t progress.
As reproductive health becomes increasingly digital, the companies building these tools have a responsibility to protect the women using them—not simply collect as much information as technology allows.
Your fertility data belongs to you.
Your pregnancy information belongs to you.
Your mental health information belongs to you.
And the questions you ask during some of the most vulnerable moments of your life belong to you, too.
That’s the standard we built Obi around.
Because you shouldn’t have to choose between getting the support you need and protecting your privacy.
Don’t Google. Ask Obi.
