Wearable tech’s new frontier: China-made smart tampons with real-time data tracking

When American engineer Amanda Brief told her colleagues she was leaving her job to join a hardware accelerator in China, she was experiencing one of the most embarrassing moments a woman can face, but luckily her invention is designed to solve exactly that problem.

Brief and her University of California, Berkeley classmates designed the my.Flow tampon monitor to alert a user when their tampon is full and to prevent any leaks onto their clothing.

In late April, Brief became the first person to test the menstrual flow tracker, removing the risk of the type of accident that had forced her to tie a sweater around her waist as she spoke to co-workers in January.

“I let [men] know that whether you know it or not, every woman in your life has or knows someone personally who has a menstruation mortification tale,” Brief says. “We just don’t talk about it.”

She says social taboos and shyness have meant the tech industry has mostly ignored services and products for the menstrual cycle.