'My fitness app knew I was pregnant before I did'

A week later, as the data was not improving, she found a community of women online claiming that their physical activity apps were showing signs that they were pregnant, based on the data collected by the monitoring devices. Another week passed and your pregnancy test came back positive. Ravika had cramps and a cell phone notification stated that her body was apparently under significant stress. So she consulted a doctor. She was told to return in 10 days for tests to make sure the pregnancy was healthy. But the wait was agonizing and led her to anxiously check her stats on the fitness app. She says that she woke up every day at four in the morning "just to update my app and see if my data was still bad and if my temperature was still high. I kept hoping that it was a viable pregnancy." Statistics, according to her, have become an “obsession”. “For me, it really felt like a life or death situation,” she says. For many women, the first sign of a possible pregnancy is a late menstrual period. And the pregnancy test can be carried out around the same time. With the exception of some tests that claim to detect pregnancy earlier, most can only identify hormonal changes from the first day of a missed period. Ravika says her Oura smart ring warned her that her health assessment was poor, but she felt perfectly fine Personal Archive But Ravika is one of hundreds of women reporting online that they noticed signs of pregnancy early, through data from their physical activity apps. The popularity of devices that monitor health data, such as smart rings, smartwatches and smart vests, has soared in the UK. A survey by the YouGov institute indicates that, in January 2026, 36% of British adults owned and used one of these devices, almost double the figure in July 2019. The American-Finnish company Oura holds the largest share of sales in the smart rings market, which also includes the Indian Ultrahuman and the Hong Kong company RingConn. Predicting Miscarriages in addition to Pregnancy One of the main symptoms of pregnancy is the change in body temperature. Therefore, smart devices that include this monitoring function are popular among people trying to get pregnant. In a typical cycle, a woman's body temperature will remain elevated until just before the start of menstruation, when it drops abruptly. But in early pregnancy, body temperature normally remains high. And, if a smart device measures body temperature, it can detect this symptom early. In addition to the statistics, Ravika began reading posts on the platform Reddit, published by women claiming that their Oura smart ring predicted not only their pregnancies, but also miscarriages, with the notification of "important signs" from the device. For Ravika, checking her health details has become an 'obsession' BBC Sofia, 32, was one of them. On two occasions, she identified when she lost a pregnancy through data from her Oura smart ring, until she became pregnant again, with her son who is now five months old. The first time she got pregnant early last year, she checked her app every morning. “When I woke up to see the progress of the temperature line and saw on the app that it had dropped, I knew something was wrong,” she says. "When I actually had the miscarriage, I was already kind of mentally prepared, because of the data I had observed." The same thing happened again three months later. Sofia and her husband decided to suspend the attempts, but it was during this break that she received a notification of "small signs of tension" from her ring. And he noticed that his temperature had increased again. She took the test and the result was positive. This pregnancy was healthy, but Sofia spent the first few weeks anxious, repeatedly checking her data. "I asked myself, 'Oh my God, is this going to happen again?'" she says. "And I remember waking up at four or five in the morning just to check my app and see if the temperature had gone down." "I was so worried about that fact that when I was seven or eight weeks pregnant, I had to remove my ring and didn't wear it again for the rest of the first trimester." Increased anxiety Reproductive medicine consultant Stuart Lavery, from University College Hospital London, says: "People use this technology to get more information, understandably, and to try to find out what's going on as early as possible. So it has a profound impact on your life if you're planning a pregnancy." But he warns people to try not to rush too much. "We probably need a lot more data on reliability, we need a lot more research...otherwise what happens is your anxiety levels will just skyrocket," he said. "I have no doubt that more people will use technology, an app-based technique or wearable device, to try to gather this data. But I think it should come with a big health warning, indicating how much we can trust it in terms of accuracy." Asked about anxiety