Femtech company Flo Health is using a data intelligence platform from California-based Databricks to power its analytics and AI initiatives for delivering personal health recommendations.

UK firm Flo Health supports over 75 million users with personalised recommendations across every stage of their health journey, from menstruation to conception, pregnancy and menopause. The team turned to Databricks to replace fragmented data systems and legacy infrastructure that made it difficult to deliver cohesive, AI-powered user experiences at scale.

Since adopting the Databricks platform, internal monthly active users have increased by 45% and weekly active users by 57%.

“Our previous systems couldn’t handle the scale and complexity of our data,” said Roman Bugaev, CTO at Flo Health. “Databricks’ data intelligence platform provided the centralised data and AI platform we needed to innovate much faster and create a purpose-driven data strategy with data democratisation at its core.”

Since adopting the platform, Flo Health has improved its data management and use, strengthened data governance and enhanced its ability to deliver personalised health insights to its users worldwide.

Flo now runs 150 to 200 experiments in parallel and 400 per quarter, driving insights into user preferences and feature performance. The team’s AI models now also power health predictions, offering users actionable insights for conditions such as irregular cycles or dietary needs during pregnancy.

The Flo team is using Databricks to fine-tune large language models (LLMs) for Ask Flo, its generative AI-powered health assistant, using Mosaic AI, Databricks’ product for domain-specific AI agent systems.

To meet stringent compliance requirements, including those relating to data privacy, Flo Health uses Unity Catalog, a unified and open governance option for data and AI, to enforce fine-grained access controls and robust data governance throughout its data workflows, enabling features such as Anonymous Mode to safeguard sensitive customer data.

Data democratisation is a key priority for the Flo Health team. Nearly half (46%) of Flo Health employees, including engineers, data scientists and business analysts, actively use Databricks each month to make informed decisions.

The team has also been piloting AI/BI Genie, a capability within Databricks that leverages generative AI to help business teams interact with their data using natural language to ask questions such as “What were our active users for last month?” and receive instant answers.

Databricks Assistant, a conversational AI assistant, is streamlining SQL query debugging. As part of a broader initiative called Copilot, with Databricks Assistant as the foundation, Flo Health is empowering product managers and analysts to work seamlessly with SQL.

“Ensuring that our employees are data-driven and can interact with data in natural language is paramount to us offering the best possible service to our customers,” said Bugaev. “The Databricks data intelligence platform offers the privacy, scalability, security and ease of use to help us make a positive impact on women’s healthcare, and I’m excited by where the partnership can go next.”

Nico Gaviola, vice president at Databricks, added: “Digital natives like Flo Health are looking for smarter, faster, more reliable ways to translate vast amounts of data, safely and securely, to aid innovation on a global scale. Flo Health and Databricks share a commitment to using data and AI for societal benefit, so we’re thrilled the team has found so much value in the platform to make a real difference in people’s lives.”

Databricks (www.databricks.com) is headquartered in San Francisco with offices around the globe.

With more than 120 medical experts, Flo Health (flo.health) supports 75 million monthly active users. It provides curated cycle and ovulation tracking, tailored health insights, daily bite-sized visual content, and a private community for users to share their questions and concerns.