It’s with a heavy heart that I’ve paused my subscription to the contraceptive app Natural Cycles this week. It follows the news that the Advertising Standards Authority has ruled that the app cannot with confidence advertise itself as a “highly accurate contraceptive”, primarily because the statistics on its efficacy – that only seven in 100 women using it will become pregnant – come from a study conducted by the company that developed the app itself.

Natural Cycles promotes itself as a form of non-hormonal, non-intrusive contraception. Women input information about their menstrual cycles and body temperature into the app, and it uses algorithms to predict which days they are at risk of getting pregnant in the event of unprotected sex.

The data from its own study suggests that, if used correctly, it might be more effective than other methods such as the combined pill (nine in 100) or condoms (18 in 100). But the NHS has criticised the study’s research methods, saying it is based on retrospective data and is not impartial, given that it was paid for by the app’s founders. Others have pointed to the fact that the studies into its efficacy are based on a group of self-selecting users.

So what does this say about the efficacy of Natural Cycles? Certainly not that it is necessarily a poorer contraceptive choice than anything else – just that more independent research needs to be done before we can be as confident in it as more traditional methods of contraception.

To some extent, this is always going to be a problem faced by new contraceptives – we’ve had decades to research the effectiveness of condoms, the coil and the pill, and there is still an unease among many in the medical profession when it comes to new tech-based solutions.

And yet the popularity of Natural Cycles and women’s willingness to use it is not merely another “tech hype” tale. It tells us something very important about the future of contraception and what women want: we are ready for something that disrupts neither our hormones, our moods, nor our pleasure. If algorithms can now predict Alzheimer’s disease before medics, and if the prospect of biohacking our brains to optimise mental performance is no longer merely the stuff of science fiction, then there is surely a role for tech products in preventing pregnancy and affording us control over our reproductive future.

‘Senior medics I have talked with are concerned about the impacts of women and girls turning to less efficacious methods.’ Photograph: Alamy

While, according to NHS statistics, use of the pill may not be substantially down, anecdotally, on message boards and in dozens of magazine articles, growing numbers of women are clamouring for something that does not come with the deeply unpleasant side-effects scores of them have reported – including increased appetite and depressive mood. Senior medics I have talked with, including at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, are concerned about the impacts – both in terms of teenage pregnancy rates and the strain on abortion services if what they turn to instead is not efficacious (the pill is, after all, the cheapest and easiest contraceptive to prescribe).

So while Natural Cycles, which has an annual subscription in the UK of £39.99, might have been responsible for 37 unwanted pregnancies in one hospital in Sweden, we should not dismiss the potential for tech-based contraception to offer affordable, convenient healthcare in countries like the US where birth control is often not covered by health insurance (indeed, Donald Trump has rolled back the mandate even further since taking office) and can end up costing women up to $50 a month. It even beats some versions of the pill, which cost the NHS around £70 a year per person.

What seems to stand in its way is a prejudice against tech, particularly when it is women pioneering it (which echoes the backlash against female contraceptive campaigners of the past, such as Annie Besant and Marie Stopes). Of course the company was wrong to overclaim for the app on the basis of the available evidence. But in general we should support female-owned businesses trying to come up with a solution to a daily problem that disproportionately affects women – something truly rare in the tech and surgical equipment industries.

It was only last year that a team of female engineers redesigned the speculum used in procedures such as smear tests, the current version of which was first invented by a male gynaecologist in the 19th century, trialled on slave women, and is still in common use today. In the 100 or so years since it was invented, no man has ever thought to try to make it more comfortable for the millions of women who encounter it. By comparison, the colonoscope, mainly used to examine men over 50 and assess their risk of colon cancer – has been through several iterations.

From the female power duo that launched ethical, refined condom brand Hanx, to the Barcelona-based anarchist collective GynePunk, who created DIY gynae products with sex workers and the poorest women in mind, it is women who are coming up with the most ingenious ways to solve our contraceptive conundrums.

Although I’ve pressed pause for now, I’m optimistic that I’ll be using Natural Cycles again in the near future. As a thrombophilic thirtysomething hoping for a baby soon but not quite yet, who is in a monogamous relationship with minimal risk of STI infection, but is prohibited from taking the pill because of my congenital risk of blood clotting, for me it’s been a godsend – and, importantly, after two years’ dependency on it, I haven’t got pregnant. We should be supporting further efforts to develop tech-based contraceptives, not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

• Nichi Hodgson is a sex and relationships author and broadcaster