Maeve O’Neil, a 19-year-old freshman at George Washington University, knew she was sick — but had no idea just how dire it had become.
It was seeing a dramatic spike in her respiratory rate, resting heart rate and body temperature through her device that gave her the courage to get it checked out — before it was too late.
“It started around 3 a.m., while I was staying with my mom in a hotel after having been incredibly sick for six days,” she recalled.
“I woke up and instantly knew something was wrong. I couldn’t fall back asleep, and worse, I couldn’t even lie on my back because the pain was so intense. My first instinct was to check my Oura app, and what I saw honestly scared me.”
She was soon being rushed to the ER at George Washington Hospital, where she was immediately put on oxygen.
Numerous tests ensued. She was in respiratory failure, and was ultimately diagnosed with Lemierre’s syndrome — a rare, life-threatening condition that usually starts with a bacterial throat infection like tonsillitis — as well as double pneumonia, septic emboli and COVID-19.
Maeve spent seven days in the ICU fighting for her life, plus another ten on the infectious disease floor, where she ended up needing thoracic surgery to place tubes on her lungs to allow them to heal.
She’s made a great recovery, and now, five months on, she’s thriving — and a Division I lacrosse player — but it may not have turned out this way.
She had originally bought the Oura ring simply to take her health a bit more seriously, and she liked the goals it presented. But it did more for her than she could have ever imagined.
“I keep thinking about how different things could’ve been if I hadn’t checked my Oura data that night,” she said. “Without it, I probably wouldn’t have gone to the ER when I did — and I might not be here to tell this story.”
What can trackers actually do?
It’s now estimated a third of Americans are using some form of activity tracker or smart wearable.
Increasingly often, that’s led to stories of users learning about serious health conditions — thanks to a digital nudge from their ring or watch. There have been multiple accounts of people getting diagnoses for lymphoma — as well as conditions like lupus and AFib — after wearable metrics convinced them to see a doctor.
But while some consumer health trackers include FDA-cleared features — such as atrial fibrillation detection on newer Apple watches, Fitbits, Samsung Galaxy smartwatches and the Withings ScanWatch — the brands all warn that they are not diagnostic tools designed to identify illness.
“Oura Ring is not a medical device and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, monitor, or prevent medical conditions or illnesses,” the brand previously told The Post.
What they can increasingly do, though, is provide people with cold hard data on things like heart rate, skin temperature and sleep patterns when something feels wrong, triggering the wearer to see a medical professional for a crucial diagnosis.
“Wearables are becoming the rearview mirror and the windshield of personal health,” said Dr. Jordan Shlain, the founder of Private Medical. “They show you where you’ve been and, increasingly, where you might be heading.
“When someone notices their resting heart rate has been creeping up for three weeks, or their sleep architecture has quietly collapsed, that’s not a gadget being clever. That’s pattern recognition at a scale no human could track on their own. The real power is in the baseline. Once you know your normal, you can spot your abnormal.”
That’s not to say they are the be all and end all, though.
“A wearable can tell you something is off. It cannot tell you what is off, or why,” added Shlain, who has concierge practices across the US.
“Data without context is just noise. A heart rate spike could be atrial fibrillation or it could be the espresso you had at 3 p.m. We are still in the early innings of this technology, and right now these devices are collecting puzzle pieces without being able to see the full picture.”
For many, though, even those pieces have been enough to try and discover why they have not been feeling right.
Saving a lot of heartache
At 44, Nicolette Amette, a London-based TV producer, had her diagnosis off the back of a Fitbit finding.
By day she’d been feeling dizzy and out of sorts; by night her heart was racing. Her husband had seen her constant fatigue and loss of zest for life. It was only when she started wearing the Fitbit and seeing her resting heart rate was about 120 bpm, sometimes reaching over 140 bpm, that she knew something really wasn’t right.
She felt so ill one morning that she took herself to the hospital, armed with the data that showed her heart rate circling between 200 and 220 bpm.
An EKG revealed a combination of heart issues: atrioventricular nodal reentry tachycardia (AVNRT), atrial fibrillation (AF) and tachycardia, causing these fast and irregular heartbeats.
Amette ended up needing heart surgery later that year, followed by two further operations.
She relied on her wearable through treatment. She also carries a KardiaMobile device with her, a small EKG sensor that can be attached to the back of your phone, which some doctors recommend following a heart diagnosis.
On the path to diagnosis
Not every health tracker discovery is a matter of life and death.
Sandy Mendez, a 33-year-old from Houston, Texas, had originally bought an UltraHuman ring to track her sleep because she always felt tired. But its period-tracking function was what pinged a problem.
“My ring kept flagging my cycle every month,” she said. “A few months showed ovulation, but most months did not.”
That led her to a doctor’s office, where tests identified fluctuations between an overactive and an underactive thyroid.
She now feels she has an explanation for her exhaustion, as well as the palpitations she’d been having. Crucially, she said, it gave her “the confidence to advocate for myself and seek medical answers.”
“I don’t think I would have discovered my thyroid issue if it weren’t for the Ultrahuman ring,” she said. She also hopes that she and her husband are a step closer to their dream of starting a family.
Health trackers have allowed users to monitor themselves like never before, and many with chronic conditions are being encouraged by their doctors to keep track this way, rather than just waiting for check-ups.
But while rings and watches may offer a safety net, doctors still caution against waiting for an app to tell you to see an MD.
Dr. Shlain, for one, believes them to be a staple of how we will protect and monitor our health in future — but it won’t happen until they can be “be genuinely predictive, not just reactive,” integrating things like genetics and history.
“A sensor on your wrist will never look you in the eye and ask the question you didn’t know needed asking. That is what a doctor does,” he said. “Technology should make the doctor better, not make the doctor optional.”
