UPDATED 13:40 EDT / FEBRUARY 20 2014

Glow wants your boss to help you get pregnant

medium_89166669Glow, the data science app that aims to help women get pregnant, has just gone and launched a new offering aimed at employers. Yes, that’s right, Glow thinks employers might want to help their workers have more babies, and to do so its come up with “Glow for Enterprise”, a program that aims to help wannabe moms keep track of their fertility health with full support from their boss. Quite surprisingly, the project has already been back by two notable companies – Eventbrite and Evernote.

Glow was borne out of Max Levchin’s HVF labs, with the noble goal of trying to reduce the costs of fertility health care. Essentially, it’s an app that helps women to increase their chances of getting pregnant. Female users enter information about their sexual activity, fertility cycle, cervical mucus and other personal details, and the app calculates the likelihood that she’ll get pregnant on any given day. More recently, the app was given an update, adding tools that help women who want to prevent pregnancy as well.

The idea is that women can better understand when they’re likely to conceive naturally, and thus avoid undergoing expensive fertility treatments. Of course, it won’t work for everyone – which is why the company also offers its Glow First program wherein users donate $50 a month for 10 months. Those couples who opt for this and fail to conceive in that period will then be able to apply for some of these pooled funds to pay for treatments like in vitro fertilization, the costs of which can run into thousands of dollars.

Now, Glow for Enterprise is basically letting employers cover these fees on behalf of its employees, be they male or female. It says that participation in the program will be kept confidential.

“At Eventbrite, we’re always looking for innovative new ways to offer health and wellness benefits to our Britelings,” said Emily Couey, a human resources exec at Eventbrite.

Glow First

It’s nice that Eventbrite feels this way, but one has to wonder if other companies will have the same attitude.

After all, a lot of employers tend to get quite upset about their female workers getting pregnant, what with those extended periods of (paid) maternity leave. The again, for certain companies Glow for Enterprise might work out cheaper – some employers pay for medical insurance that covers the costs of treatments like IVF, and so the alternative that Glow offers might be cheaper.

Then again, we don’t actually know for certain that Glow really works anyway – the company has refused to release download or active user numbers, so there’s no way of telling how effective it is. All Glow has said is that “thousands” of women have got pregnant after using its app, but without a controlled study it’s impossible to tell just how much of an impact it really has.

Main image credit: Etolane via photopin cc

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