Flo’s and Clue’s health assessments are part of a broader shift in digital medicine. Health tracking apps have for years helped people collect and chart data on their heart rates, moods, sleep patterns and menstrual cycles. But now some of these apps are going further by using that data to predict an individual’s risk for problems like heart conditions. In other words, they are moving from simply quantifying consumers’ health data to medicalizing it.

While some of the apps’ new evaluation tools may be useful and helpful, determining whether they are accurate can be difficult. Of the several hundred thousand health apps available globally in major app stores, most lack high-level evidence on their outcomes, according to a recent study in Nature Digital Medicine. And as long as consumer health apps make vague health promises — like improved well-being — and do not claim to diagnose or treat a disease, they are not typically required to submit effectiveness evidence for vetting by the Food and Drug Administration.

“It’s certainly become confusing as a consumer if you go onto these app marketplaces and these apps are making claims about helping you learn about mental health, PCOS, heart disease, diabetes,” said Dr. John Torous, director of the digital psychiatry division at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, one of the authors of the Nature study. “Do we know this helps or it doesn’t help?”

Flo, which has more than 30 million active monthly users, and Clue, with more than 12 million, have good intentions. Their developers each said they had worked with medical experts to develop the assessments and had based them on international medical guidelines for identifying PCOS. The apps also include prominent disclaimers saying that their assessments for PCOS should not be construed as diagnoses.