Oura rings may get symptom-spotting upgrade

Oura, the company behind the sleek wearable health ring all over wellness circles and the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow, debuted its new Oura Labs beta testing site for members last month. It's an incubator for experimental health features like its recently announced, illness-spotting Symptom Radar.

The radar, which detects biometric levels like temperature, resting heart rate, and respiratory rate, is specifically not advertised as an illness detection tool, but rather a tool to "help you understand your body's signals," the company explained in a March post.

"Symptom Radar assesses your biometric data each morning to detect signs of respiratory symptoms, and will prompt you to activate Rest Mode when there is a low or moderate risk detected, or when there’s a significant elevation in body temperature," explains Oura. According to the company, such data can help in early detection of common respiratory illnesses, like the flu or common cold.

As the Verge reports, Oura and other wearable health companies previously explored illness detection as the demand for COVID-19 early detection grew. Most companies shelved the venture, or pivoted specific illness detection efforts toward general symptom management, like the new radar.

The company's 2022 Gen3 ring debuted with an expansion of its originally limited health features, including menstrual cycle prediction, blood oxygen measuring, and even new stress tracking (although the benefits of such metrics are murky at best). Many of these were still in testing periods, however, and are now joined by the Oura Labs family of upcoming additions.

Wearables are quickly expanding across the health tech market, with brands like Samsung debuting their own versions of small, sleep-tracking health devices. Last month, Google announced a new research endeavor with Fitbit, known as Fitbit Labs, to develop a new AI health model that can analyze health data and offer recommendations to users. Meanwhile, the FDA is keeping a watchful eye on wellness trackers making dubious, data-collecting claims.

How to use Oura Labs and Symptom Radar

Oura Labs is currently available to active Gen3 members on iOS. The first group of members were invited to test Labs in March. The testing environment can be found in the under the drop down menu in the top left corner of the app. New and available features will be added periodically, and users can opt out of testing at any time.

Credit: Oura