Ashley Winter, MD, director, MyFemmeTech, discusses how wearable devices can assist with sexual health.
Alina Kruk Shutterstock
I was listening to a radio show recently where a relationship expert takes listener questions. Someone called in asking why there has never been a Viagra for women. The expert then dove into a long response talking about a medication called Flibanserin, which has been widely dubbed the “Viagra for women.” I became progressively more dismayed as I listened to the programme because Flibanserin is not “female Viagra.” Viagra is a drug that increases blood flow to the genitals, a physical process known as arousal. Flibanserin is a drug designed to improve the desire for sex (and acts primarily in the brain). Desire and arousal are two fundamentally different components of the sexual response cycle, and the molecular targets for these drugs are wildly different.
This got me thinking" “How could a relationship expert who runs a radio show about sex and relationships not understand this? And if an expert has little granularity about the way the mind and body work during intimacy, how is the general population doing? And how, without such basic understanding, do people maintain their sexual health and intervene when something goes wrong?”
Now you might say, isn’t that where medical diagnostics comes in? There are a few fundamental problems here. The clinic is an artificial environment, and tools like medication-induced erection can be used, but we end up measuring an artificial event. Sexuality is a complex bio-psycho-social phenomenon that cannot be comprehensively evaluated outside of natural locations and situations where sex occurs. It's sort of like the uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics. The more you know the exact location of a particle, the less you know about its momentum. The more clinic based your evaluation is of the sexual response cycle, the less nuanced and actionable it becomes.
This, of course, is where the final frontier of wearable devices come in. An ideal use case for wearables is sexual health. Did you lose your erection when you had one or two glasses of wine? Do you have erections while you sleep, but not with your partner? Did you have trouble with arousal/lubrication when you stopped using your hormone therapy? These are all questions that can be answered when data on erection (either clitoral or penile) is collected longitudinally in a home environment. An elastomer-based hook-and-loop configuration erection ring which is embedded with biometric sensors, is already on the market and is informing patients about their sexual health and activity in a way that previously was not possible. Other devices on the market that measure nocturnal erection but cannot be left on during sex. While informative, such devices give an incomplete picture. In the future, there will be products that have a wearable sensor that will measure clitoral engorgement/arousal as well.
As a board certified urologist who is fellowship trained in treating male and female sexual dysfunction, I now can present my patients the option for using a penile “smart ring.” We can review the data together and figure out if the patient has reduced or absent nocturnal erections as well as what lifestyle and medication choices improve their strength and duration of erection during volitional sexual activity. Medical grade plastics are at the core of this intersectionality between the clinic, consumer products, and the final frontier for wearables.
