billingsMentor: Adapting natural family planning to information technology and relieving the user of unnecessary tasks

BillingsMentor is an automated Web-based service for the Billings Method of natural family planning in which the guidance and interpretation previously communicated from teacher to student is provided by programmed algorithms. There are two functions: (1) to instruct the client to generate proper descriptions of her fertility symptoms; and (2) to interpret the symptoms efficiently according to the Billings Method and to communicate the results to the client. The efficiency of billingsMentor was tested by using the historical records of students who were under the guidance of a teacher to emulate their experience under the guidance of billingsMentor. The results indicate that billingsMentor performs as well as the teacher/student in recognizing the peak of fertility but it is slightly less efficient than the teacher/student in establishing the basic infertile pattern. Advantages that arise from adapting natural family planning to information technology are discussed.