Prego Wheel App, a simple OB wheel for calculating gestational age and pregnancy due date

Most pregnancies last around 40 weeks, or to be more precise, 38 weeks from conception. The best way to estimate a pregnancy due date, therefore, would be counting 40 weeks from the day of the last period. 

However, many future moms have trouble estimating their pregnancy due date, mostly because they are not sure of their last period. While this isn't a reason to worry because it's normal to deliver a week or two before or after the due date, being able to calculate the exact gestational age is essential for providing better prenatal care, both in the inpatient and outpatient settings. 

Patients can usually calculate their gestational age by themselves, but the providers in primary care and OB/GYN are usually those who help pregnant women estimate their due date. 

The common way to calculate these dates is by using obstetric (OB) wheels, also known as pregnancy wheels or gestational calculators, which provide both patients and the prenatal care providers with the valuable information regarding the estimated gestational age and pregnancy due date.

The OB wheels are small circle-shaped calendars, made of paper or plastic, that use the last menstrual period (LMP) as a starting point to help determine the due date.

Over the years, the traditional OB wheels made of paper and plastic have been slowly replaced by their digital counterparts made exclusively for mobile devices. This is no wonder because nowadays, everyone is using mobile apps on their smartphones and tablets, including medical providers and patients.

In favor of mobile technologies, a study was published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology with a conclusion that digital gestational age calculating apps for mobile devices were more accurate than commonly used calculating wheels made of paper and plastic, suggesting that the use of these traditional gestational age wheels should be abandoned in favor of mobile apps.

But, there are many OB wheels mobile apps out there for both iOS and Android devices, and it could be really hard to decide which of them are the best and which to use.

Mobile OB wheels may come in a bundle of tools provided by medical calculator apps, such as Calculate by QxMD app, which is one of the best and most comprehensive medical calculators out there.

Among other medical calculators and algorithms, Calculate by QxMD also provides an easy-to-use OB wheel that calculates the current gestational age and due date.

Mobile OB wheels are also available as separate apps. We already reviewed OB Wheels app, a free tool for iPhone and iPad, made to resemble traditional paper- and plastic-made OB wheels with all their options, which is certainly interesting, but also a bit clunky and complicated to use on a mobile device. 

The app we review today, Prego Wheel doesn't suffer from unnecessary complexity. It is a basic and super simple OB wheel app that lets you calculate gestational age and pregnancy due date based on the last menstrual period (LMP). Most importantly, it's available for free, however, it's not available for Android, so the OB wheel app shortage remains an issue on the most popular open source mobile OS.

Prego Wheel app was created by Dr. Émilie Coudière, a Canadian-based Family Medicine Physician who practices obstetrics, with the help of her husband.

Prego Wheel app is a mobile OB wheel with a basic functionality. It is a one-page app with only three features on it, including last menstrual period (LMP), gestational age (GA), and estimated date of delivery (EDD). 

The app is easy to use. All you need to do is to set the date of your LMP, by scrolling the month, the date, or the year up or down. The date of EDD would change respectively, while gestational age would be shown for today. 

You can change this, for example, if you want to see GA in a month, and you can also set to update EDD on each change.

If you know your estimated delivery date, you can change the EDD to that date and see when your LMP was.

And that's about it. Prego Wheel doesn't suffer from superfluous features, although it would be nice if there's some sort of tracker functionality, or at least some reference or the information about the source of its calculator.

However, knowing that this app is intended to be a fast, accurate OB wheel for use at the point of care aimed at primary care physicians and OB/GYN, I'm sure that additional resources are not needed (except for the information about the calculator source).

The app currently supports three languages, including English, French, and Arabic, with the developers' intention to add 29 more languages.

Overall, Prego Wheel app is an OB wheel with deliberately basic functionality. It doesn't offer any advanced features such as patient tracking, diary, lab results, and so on. The app does what it is supposed to do, and it works like a charm.

Benefit: Family medicine providers, OB/GYN and other providers who perform obstetrics would benefit from this app