Halifax family physician helps create new app for women navigating menopause

A woman holds an iPhone. (CTV file photo)

Dr. Maria Migas has been a practising family physician for more than 20 years and has helped patients dealing with menopause and its symptoms.

Now, she’s co-founding a pilot app to help educate and guide women through menopause and perimenopause.

“It wasn’t until I embarked on my own journey that I realized that I was unprepared and I had very little training,” she told CTV Atlantic’s Your Morning.

So, she did some extra training and acquired certification to better assist her patients. She partnered up with Christine Hanson, an international lawyer and human rights advocate, and Kate Dewhirst Myers, one of Canada’s top health lawyers, to form the Three Wise Women.

“With my partners, the Three Wise Women, we sat down one day, and we thought, how can we best help women who are navigating this stage of life?” said Migas. “They, too, had their own interesting journeys, so we thought it’d be a great idea to provide a tool for women that they could use that was based on reliable information.”

Migas says there’s a lot of misinformation around women’s health, so they’re aiming to provide reliable, evidence-based information to their users.

The Three Wise Women partnered with Wellnify to start the app, which includes a menopause symptom tracker, general advice on lifestyle changes to help with the journey, and when to reach out for help.

“We know there are more than 30 symptoms associated with menopause that they can then track and then show to their family doctor should they feel that things are getting worse,” said Migas.

She says they’re just about finished with the pilot. They’ll be taking in feedback upon its completion before announcing an official launch date.

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