Oura Rings could detect early signs of COVID-19 infection according to researchers

COVID-19 has disrupted the lives of virtually everyone despite the fact that almost everybody were informed about the threat and had been educated with ways to prevent contracting the disease but still caught nevertheless.

As COVID-19 looms, traditional ways to detect the disease are mostly overwhelmed by the impact of surging cases of the disease that overloaded the capacities of testing facilities around the world.

In the US, researchers from West Virginia University’s (WVU) Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute (RNI) and WVU Medicine are turning to technology to detect early signs of the disease using the Oura wearable – a ring equipped with biometric sensors that shows promising results for early detection of COVID-19 infection among healthcare workers.

The research finds that the Oura wearable device shows 90 percent accuracy to detect COVID-19 related symptoms up to three days prior the onset of visible symptoms.

The system is based on neuroscience where the ring uses its bio sensors and a RNI app to track stress, anxiety, memory and other psychological and cognitive biometrics from participants. The Oura Wearable ring collects physiological data, such as body temperature, heart rate variability, resting heart rate, respiratory rate and sleep patterns. The data are then aggregated on the app with AI-guided models.

While the approach detects early symptoms 90% of the time, this also leaves 10% of it from slipping through the system and that means those ten percent still infects anyone close and that’s something to look into and improved. As development of this technology continues, it hoped to get around with it and make detection even more accurate and precise to fit for real world use.