Wearables were starting to demystify reproductive health — then Roe fell

Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge

The Oura smart ring can be used to detect pregnancies before most people take a test. He wrote in the paper that it was an exciting finding that earlier detection of pregnancy could be done with Wearable Devices.

Smarr is a data scientist at the University of California, San Diego. He and Oura are working on projects related to pregnant women. His team is trying to find out if data from devices can detect pregnancies.

The intersection of reproductive health and Wearables is often under explored. The applications were well received. The Supreme Court's decision to overturn the abortion law of Wade took on a new meaning. Smarr and his team are taking a break now that there are no federal protections for abortion. They are rethinking the best approach to their research.

Do we want to hurt women instead of helping them? That is pretty chilling.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic, a lot of resources were devoted to researching the ways in which smart rings and watches can detect changes in the body. Researchers were looking to see if the devices could detect early signs of COVID-19. It was hard because many of the signs of the illness were not specific.

Jessilyn says that it might be easier to tease out things like pregnancies and changes in pregnant women. She says that the core body temperature is very accurate. There's a lot of promise here.

Research is still in its infancy. Smarr and Oura did a study to see if they could detect pregnant women. Smarr says he would try to move as fast as possible. He says that it's selfish to build a career. You want to make a difference.

He is wondering if things need to slow down under the new reproductive health landscape. The team is talking about what their work might be used for. In places where there are limits on how far along in pregnancy someone can be, early detection of pregnancies could be helpful. It means there would be clear data showing that someone was pregnant and that could be used against them.

There is more research on the subject. Smarr says that they are the closest to building a tool that the bad guys wouldn't want.

Digital health researchers need to think about the context of their work. She thinks that criminalizing something related to healthcare is dangerous. It's hard for researchers to understand what our role is and should be.

The team is still trying to figure it out. He reached out to his co-workers at Oura. Tom Hale, Oura's CEO, said in a statement that the company is adding more safeguards to its data and preparing to make changes to its privacy policies.

There are other factors that could slow research in this area. Women are more likely to take part in digital health studies. Smarr says that the end of abortion could have a chilling effect on how willing people are to give their data to researchers. That could make it difficult for these teams to accomplish what they are capable of.

He thinks that this will have a negative impact on the rate at which we do research. Women's health is so bad that we are bad at it. We are already way behind. Fear can be used to keep people ignorant.