Oura Ring users will soon be able to get more insights about their hormonal health. The smart ring, best known for tracking sleep and other health metrics, will add hormonal birth control and updated menopause insights starting May 6, Oura said Friday.  

The Oura Ring already provides cycle and pregnancy insights, along with predictions for the fertile window. The new update expands on these features by allowing members to log more than 20 combinations of contraception they're using, such as pills, patches, IUDs and other hormonal methods.

The insights are meant to help users understand how their contraceptive methods may affect bodily functions like sleep, recovery and body temperature. Members who menstruate will be able to use this data to determine what a normal cycle looks like for them based on hormone and hormone-free days. 

Dr. Chris Curry, Oura's clinical director of women's health and an obstetrician and gynecologist, told CNET that, when members are more in tune with their bodies, their doctor's appointments will be more efficient.

"That data, covering temperature patterns, sleep, recovery and symptom trends, could give gynecologists meaningful context that a brief office visit often can't capture," Curry said. 

"When more than half of women in their reproductive years are using contraception and more than a billion women are moving through perimenopause and menopause, asking them to rely on trial and error, vague reassurance or generic symptom trackers simply isn't good enough," Holly Shelton, Oura's chief product officer, said in a statement.

Privacy with Oura

As with any device that collects and analyzes personal data, there are questions about how private that information is and what companies might do with it -- or what happens if there's a data breach. When Oura launched an AI chatbot in April focused on women's health, the company said it doesn't sell customers' health data and plans to design a "private AI" function that allows AI insights to be processed and generated on your device.  

Data around menstrual health is particularly sensitive. In the wake of the US Supreme Court's 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade's federal protection of the right to abortion, many users of period-tracking apps became concerned that such data could be used in criminal prosecutions of people seeking abortion care. 

Oura already has a cycle insights feature for those who are experiencing perimenopause and menopause symptoms, with a 12-question assessment that quantifies symptoms and gives you an "impact to quality of life" score. Once completed, a PDF containing all your symptoms is generated and can be shared with doctors.

The Menopause Impact Scale

The new menopause insights are similar and include a self-reported questionnaire called the Menopause Impact Scale. Curry explained that the original assessment only allowed members to add symptoms and track general health metrics without a framework that connected what members were feeling to their biometrics. 

"The new menopause impact scale introduces a research-backed clinical layer that not only didn't exist in the app, but also didn't exist in women's health care more broadly," Curry said. 

As some members enter this stage of life, the 22-symptom questionnaire (developed by Oura's clinical and science teams) assesses symptom burden and quality-of-life impact. These include questions about mood, cognition, sleep and daily functioning, which show members how perimenopause is affecting them daily. 

"By connecting hormonal context to the biometric data Oura tracks, we're giving women visibility, language and evidence they've never had at this scale," Shelton said. Curry adds that members can make lifestyle adjustments based on this data and share this information with their doctors.

Oura's new health care partnership

Along with these updates, Oura said it is partnering with the virtual health platform Twentyeight Health to connect US members with licensed clinicians for same-day appointments. Oura already has partnerships with various virtual health care platforms, including Maven Clinic, Midi Health, Evernow, Vida Health and Progyny. And in April, Oura introduced a women's health-specific AI chatbot, meant to help women answer health questions.