Xella Health has integrated Oura wearable data into its women’s health platform, allowing members to share trends with clinicians alongside diagnostic results.

Members can choose to share information including sleep, heart rate variability, resting heart rate, temperature trends, recovery, activity and menstrual-cycle data.

The integration is intended to help clinicians investigate biological factors that may explain changes in members’ wearable data and symptoms.

Kelly Lacob, chief executive and co-founder of Xella Health, said: “Wearables detect that something in the body has changed, but wearable data alone can’t tell a woman why or what to do next with that information.”

“By pairing continuous physiological monitoring from Oura with Xella’s multiomic diagnostics and physician-guided care, we enable women to understand how specific health concerns are impacting her biometrics, and vice versa how her daily habits are impacting her overall health and specific conditions or life stages she is navigating.

“Further, we are able to track how her relevant vitals and biometrics respond to specific interventions or treatment plans, so we can optimise her care more efficiently.

“Ultimately, this partnership helps us better address her symptoms today whilst also proactively optimising her long-term health trajectory for decades to come.”

Xella Health combines AI, multiomic testing and physician-guided telehealth care through a membership platform.

Multiomic testing analyses several types of biological information.

Xella said its testing assesses hormonal and metabolic health, inflammation, nutritional status, reproductive health and cardiometabolic risk.

Physicians use those findings to develop personalised care plans that may include clinical treatments.

Clinicians can then review shared Oura trends alongside diagnostic results and member check-ins to monitor progress and adjust care over time.

The company said providers interpret biometric data in the context of each member’s health conditions, goals and treatment plan.

The integration focuses on fertility, perimenopause, hormonal and cardiometabolic health, as well as women’s longer-term health.

Oura has expanded its women’s health offerings through integrations connecting wearable measurements with other sources of health data.

In February, it partnered with at-home hormone tracking company Mira, allowing users to view hormone test results alongside sleep, temperature and readiness data in the Mira app.

The integration is intended to help users track patterns related to fertility, menstrual cycles and perimenopause.

That month, Oura also introduced a women’s health AI model for testing through Oura Labs.

Integrated into Oura Advisor, the model combines biometric data with clinician-reviewed medical information to provide guidance on menstrual cycles, pregnancy and menopause.

In May, the company launched menopause insights and hormonal birth control support.

Its Menopause Insights offering uses a questionnaire covering 22 symptoms of menopause alongside wearable data, while birth control support helps users understand their biometric trends in the context of hormonal contraception.

Partners of women going through menopause will be invited to experience hot flushes using a menopause simulator at a support event in Hull next month.

Health group Over The Bloody Moon will bring one of its MenoVests to the Menopaus’ull Support Network event, allowing people to experience a hot flush.

Sarah Weichardt, who co-manages the project, said: “We’re particularly interested in getting men along to come and experience the MenoVest, just so that they can understand what women go through.

“It’s not just a hot flush, it’s what the hot flush brings with it.

“So it could be panic, it could be anxiety. It’s experiencing it all at the same time.”

MenoVest is billed as the ‘world’s first’ wearable menopause simulator – a garment worn over regular clothing that generates realistic, intense hot flush sensations while the wearer carries on with everyday work tasks.

After just a few minutes wearing it, people gain a genuine sense of what these symptoms feel like, building empathy and highlighting why better support matters during this transition.

Weichardt said she hoped the vest would give people a “better understanding of what women are going through”.

“The more people we can get to experience it, the better,” she added.

Michigan State University researchers are launching a novel project to transform how medications are developed and prescribed for women.

A US$4.6m award will fund computer models designed to predict how hormonal changes affect the way medicines move through and act in women’s bodies.

The funding is the first instalment of an award worth up to US$12.8m over three years, supporting work intended to account for hormonal changes throughout women’s lives.

Researchers plan to examine factors including menstrual cycles, pregnancy, contraceptive use, menopause and hormone replacement therapy, which can affect responses to medicines.

Teresa K. Woodruff, lead investigator on the project, said: “Because female hormone levels are constantly shifting, precision medicine allows us to map out these complex interactions.

“This NIH-backed initiative will create the first computationally driven clinical tool designed to guide medical care across every stage of a woman’s life.”

The project is led by researchers at Michigan State University and funded by the National Institutes of Health, with collaborators from Rutgers, Emory, Tulane, the University of Colorado Anschutz, the University of Michigan and the University of Utah.

Thirteen researchers will develop computational models to predict how changes in female hormones influence the way medicines move through and act within the body.

The work is part of the NIH Computational Modeling of Hormone Homeostasis Initiative, which is awarding US$21m nationally to support research into sex-specific hormonal biology.

The team plans to use artificial intelligence to digitise and organise more than 40 years of hormone research data in a publicly accessible database.

Researchers will also develop a standard computer model of a 28-day menstrual cycle, alongside models of how hormones regulate organs and tissues involved in processing nutrients, including the liver, muscle and fat.

Real-world patient data will then be used to expand the models to represent groups including women going through menopause or taking birth control, as well as women with conditions such as diabetes and obesity.

The project will also use three-dimensional human tissue models and lab-grown organoids, including liver, muscle and ovarian tissue, to test and refine the computer predictions.

Researchers plan to examine medicines including metformin, insulin and GLP-1 drugs, with the aim of developing tools that could help clinicians tailor doses and avoid harmful side effects.

Qiang Zhang, associate professor at Emory University, said: “Empowered by AI, novel assays and legacy human data, we will develop mechanistically based computational models of female physiology that can make translational, quantitative predictions for women’s responses to metabolic therapies.”

The researchers said the work could help address differences in how women respond to treatments for metabolic conditions including obesity, type 2 diabetes, cholesterol imbalances and thyroid disorders.

Nanette Santoro, professor at the University of Colorado Anschutz and president of the Endocrine Society, said: “Women experience large shifts in reproductive hormones at several points in their lifespan: puberty, pregnancy and menopause.

“During reproductive years, women also undergo profound day-to-day changes in reproductive hormone levels, giving them a markedly different endocrine backdrop than men.

“Using state-of-the-art computational technology to examine how these changes interact with commonly used medications is a critical pathway toward supporting life-course women’s health.”

The project team said its computer models and data will be made freely available to researchers and healthcare professionals when the work is completed.