What you need to know
- Oura announced two major features on the way in a May 6 update that will focus on women’s health: Hormonal Birth Control support and Menopause Insights.
- The birth control support will lean on a woman’s chosen contraception method to show how it might affect their baseline, while Menopause Insights focuses on symptoms and tailored help.
- April saw the introduction of Oura’s partnership with Vida Health, helping users understand important cardiovascular changes.
Oura is kicking off May with a feature update that brings two women’s health-focused tools to remove the guesswork from hormonal health.
Earlier this morning (May 1), Oura announced (via BusinessWire) that Hormonal Birth Control support and Menopause Insights will soon arrive in its app. Holly Shelton, Oura’s chief product officer, highlighted the catalyst behind this update, stating, “Hormonal health has been treated as an afterthought in both medicine and technology for decades.” The company is looking to solve that by adding Birth Control support to Oura’s pre-existing Cycle Insights.
Getting away from “fragmented support,” this new support leans on pills, patches, IUDs, and more to show women how contraception could influence their baseline over time. When the update rolls out on May 6, women can log their birth control method and “see the impact of hormonal contraception on temperature patterns, sleep, and recovery.”
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Symptom tracking, alongside tailored education, will help women understand what’s normal for their bodies.
The other side of this update rolling out next week is Menopause Insights. Oura states this remains one of the most “overlooked and misunderstood phases” in women’s health.
To combat this, Oura is said to give a “symptom assessment,” after this, “members receive a personalized dashboard that translates their symptoms into an overall impact level.” The My Health View in the Oura app lets users follow sudden changes and view lifestyle changes, stress, and more. Users can save this data and share it with their doctors during a visit to make more sense of it all.
Making the right call
Cycle Insights has been available in the Oura app for a while, and an update last fall expanded its capabilities. This was around the time that Oura announced its Blood Pressure Profile study to help users identify potential signs of hypertension. Cycle Insights saw its informational window expand from one month to 12. Now, women (if you’re an Oura Member) have more of a context window to understand their period and fertile window predictions.
Mid-April brought another partnership with Oura, as it added Vida Health, a virtual cardiometabolic care provider. The goal was to allow Vida Health to leverage Oura’s sleep, heart rate variability, resting heart rate, and more, alongside its clinical health data to help users identify cardiovascular signs. If a doctor’s visit is advised, users would be notified.
Android Central’s Take
I feel that the more information and help we have out there for women’s health, the better. At times, it almost feels like people are scared to talk about this kind of thing. Women’s health is crucial, as crucial as anyone else’s. There’s too much misinformation, and more times than not, you’ll have someone scrounging around trying to piece together what matters to them. But everyone’s different. It looks like Oura sees that and is trying do something that could help.