Jeffrey Bland defends wearable biometric devices against a New York Times critique, describing how his Oura Ring caught early signs of illness before symptoms appeared: his readiness score dropped from the high 80s to 40, then recovered to 92 over five to six days. He argues people need better education on reading these signals.
Questions this video answers
Brian Chin
"Oura Ring Review A Missed Opportunity for Wearable Tech"
From averages in the high 80s down to 40, then back up to 92
Approximately a 5–6 day period
Chapters
Hi Jeff Bland and I'd like to share with you a thought that follows on the series of little video blogs that I've done previously on my Oura Ring. I need to say here a caveat disclaimer. I have no relationship to the Oura Ring company. This is not an endorsement or a promotion other than to talk a little bit about a recent article that just appeared in the New York Times or that was picked up by syndicated newspapers around the country. And it's written by Brian Chin and it's entitled Oura Ring Review A Missed Opportunity for Wearable Tech. And it's a fairly critical and I would call dismissive article as it relates to the value of this biometric tool that really talks more than just specifically this technology in this one device, but about the whole nature of biometric measurements. It's very critical. It basically says these are not accurate, that this doesn't provide useful data, that it's very confusing, it's very vulnerable to artifacts. He speaks specifically to the fact that he rode on a motorcycle. And then later looking at his data on his step count, he found that his Oura ring had recorded that he'd taken thousands of steps because the motorcycle was vibrating and it created the illusion it was steps when it wasn't really steps. And so this was really negating the whole value proposition as to why one would wear one of these biometric tools. I want to say that this is absolutely wrong because I have been studying collaboratively the value proposition from these biometric tools as recently as just last month when I had an infrequent cold, actually the first one I've had in a couple of years in which I followed pre symptomatic my cold. My biometrics from my Oura ring were already starting to change. My sleep was disturbed, my respiration went up, my body temperature went up, my heart rate variability went down. All of these were presaging then the cold that I then experienced over the next several days and I could actually see how my body was actually mobilizing. My immune system was taking a lot of my energy to activate my immune system. And my overall readiness score went from it averages in the high 80s down to 40 and it was showing how much of my energy was being sucked into mobilization of my immune system. And then over the course of the next couple of days, this is now a five to six day period, I saw resolution as my immune system kicked in. I got my first innate immune system, then my adaptive immune system and then finally resolution of inflammation and my score came back up to a 92 my readiness score. So the construct that there is no valuable information from these tools is totally wrong. What we need is education about how to interpret this information so it becomes more useful and more motivating for positive behavior change so that people really understand the tremendous learning opportunity that exists and in these tools. And so as we add more kind of analytics into these tools, now we have aspects of heart rhythm, now we aspects of blood oxygen saturation, more and more things. Eventually we're going to have blood glucose continuous monitoring. Eventually we're going to have non invasive measurements of blood pressure in real time, continuous blood pressure. All of these will become part of our running record of our physiology. That as we use these tools we we're not just become a biohacker weirdo, we're actually becoming informed as to how to orchestrate our life in a very positive way by taking charge of how our body is responding to its environment. So to me, this article was misleading. It didn't lead to any really positive outcome other than kind of techno nihilism. And it did not alert us to the fact that we are going to become the most well informed society that's ever existed of humans about our health and how to monitor it and manage it individually and personally, in which personalized lifestyle intervention becomes the topic of all of our future activities. So that's my thoughts.
