CES 2024: Health ring adds smarts to women’s data

There are many women-focused health devices on the market, mostly giving deeper insights into menstrual cycles and the like, but they are usually built into smartwatches, with apps on smartphones combining activity data with info input by the user.

A new approach was unveiled at CES 2024 in Las Vegas this week with Evie, the first women-focused smart ring.

According to its manufacturer, Movano Health, Evie “is redefining the wearable category with a unique band design, female-specific data interpretation, and AI-based trend analysis that goes beyond raw activity scores to improve users’ ability to understand and manage their health”.

Evie, one of this year’s winners of the CES Innovation Awards, was showcased during the CES Unveiled event this weekend, and will be released on the market during January. It is based on the latest research related to women’s biometrics, along with interviews with more than 1,000 women to find out what they want from a wearable device.

“The Evie Ring and companion app were built from the ground up to provide a smarter, more user-friendly, women-focused experience,” says Movano.

As provided by the company, its features include:

• Smarter form factor. Evie is the first smart ring designed with a small gap in the ring surface and slight flex in the scratch-resistant metal to accommodate daily fluctuations in finger size due to hormonal changes and other variables, ensuring a comfortable fit at all times. Additionally, Evie’s charging case is portable and can recharge the ring up to 10 times on one charge for easy on-the-go use.
• Smarter sensor. The Evie Ring utilises highly sensitive medical-grade sensors to optimise vital sign measurement on women’s fingers, which tend to be smaller and have less blood flow than men’s. Brighter and more efficient LEDs that emit more light improve the quality of the optical signals, yielding higher accuracy and better repeatability with less battery drain.
• Smarter metrics. In addition to the individual activity and performance metrics provided by other wearables, Evie includes an industry-first Daily Summary that aggregates each day’s activities and recovery into a single graphic for at-a-glance understanding of that day’s performance. The Daily Summary also dynamically displays the user’s progress toward her pre-set goals – again, in a single snapshot – and uniquely includes credit for factors such as getting enough sleep.
• Smarter data analysis. Evie leverages newer studies that consider women-specific factors such as hormonal changes combined with a custom AI engine to search for correlations across menstrual health, mood, energy, sleep and activity. Whether it’s “We’ve noticed your mood improves when you get 1000 more steps than your average” or “Your sleep may be interrupted during this phase of your menstrual cycle due to a dip in progesterone,” these insights can help users modify their behaviours to optimise their daily routines.
• Smarter pricing. The Evie Ring costs $269 with no subscription fees, keeping costs low over the life of the wearable.

Other features include a Spot Check function enabling users to see their pulse rate and blood oxygen levels at any time; the ability to log mood, menstrual symptoms and other information that is then combined with vital sign data to help users understand how they’re feeling.

New features to be added over the next several months include enhanced menstrual health insights and additional visualisations of menstrual data that leverage Evie’s AI engine to shed more detailed light on links between a woman’s cycle and mood, energy, sleep and activity; My Health Report enabling users to share key data ranging from sleep patterns and heart rate variability to spotting frequency with their healthcare provider; and automatic activity detection as soon as the user begins running, walking or biking without needing to log the information in the Evie app. The ring and companion app are currently compatible with Apple’s iOS, but Evie is planning to support Android devices from the second quarter of 2024. The Evie Ring is available exclusively at www.eviering.com.