reproductivehealth

Data privacy awareness boomed last June when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, limiting access to safe, legal abortion. Now, eight months later, privacy experts say not to let your guard down. Legislative bodies have made little progress on health data security. We give up so much data each day that it’s easy to tune out. We blindly accept permissions or turn on location sharing, but that data can also be used by governing bodies to prosecute civilians or by attackers looking to extort individuals. That’s why,…

In early May, Ben Smarr published a new study showing that the Oura smart ring can detect pregnancy before most people take a test. It was an exciting finding — earlier detection of pregnancy based on wearable devices could, he wrote in the paper, “increase the agency of pregnant individuals.” Smarr, a data scientist at the University of California, San Diego does research on wearable devices and health — including reproductive health. He’s working with Oura on other projects around pregnancy. His team is also looking…