Sensors and algorithms combine to help wearable devices measure step counts, calories burned, oxygen levels and more
, the Oura ring looks rather ordinary, indistinguishable from a chunky wedding band. But a faint green light that intermittently leaks out from the gap between finger and ring suggests that it is not just jewellery.
. Artificial intelligence gives extra oomph to the algorithms. Technology advancements in the past five years have made it possible to pack wearable devices with more sophisticated sensors and more computing power. Oura’s third-generation ring, released three years after the second, has 32 times more memory with the same battery life.
In medicine, diagnoses often depend on biomarkers—specific molecules in blood and other fluids linked to a particular health condition. High blood-sugar concentration, for example, is a biomarker for diabetes. Neurological diseases are usually diagnosed with standardised assessments of how people behave, and how well they perform certain tasks. Some of the algorithmic measurements made by wearable devices can be thought of as digital equivalents of established biomarkers and diagnostic tests.
Wearables can also spot healthy changes that people want to know about. Upticks in temperature, for example, are markers for ovulation and pregnancy. Oura is testing a feature predicting weeks in advance the date of a woman’s next period. A small study found that measurements from the ring could detect pregnancy on average nine days before at-home pregnancy tests.There is almost no part of human biology that has remained untouched by digital measurement.
One area where independent studies find consistently good performance across many devices is heart-rate measurement. Euan Ashley, a cardiologist at Stanford University whose team has done independent studies on the accuracy of wearable devices, says that leading brands, notably Apple and Fitbit, have been good at measuring heart rate for years, “to the point that I would have been willing to trust it in a clinical situation”.
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