that are similar to an NBA player.

For one I'm 5'4", but today I have at least one thing

in common with a professional basketball player.

I'm wearing this Smart Ring.

The NBA has bought 2000 of these rings,

which are made by Oura Health,

as part of their COVID-19 safety plan.

The league offered them to players

in the anti COVID-19 bubble at Disney world,

where they'll finish the rest of the season.

Inside the bubble, the NBA is using the rings

to predict if someone might be developing symptoms

of an illness, like COVID-19.

The problem is, there's no proof that predicting

any disease, including COVID-19,

via wearables is possible, yet.

- [James] We simply don't know enough right now.

- [Nicole] That's James Gilmore,

a wearable technologies researcher at Clemson university.

- [James] A lot of the reporting that's happening around

the NBA's decision risks inflating this wearable ring

into this sort of mystical object,

that anybody can buy, and anybody can use to, you know,

see if they're gonna have COVID-19 or not,

which is not the case,

based on the understanding that we have today.

- The Oura Ring monitors things like heart rate,

steps, body temperature, and sleep.

The theory is that subtle changes in those measures

can detect illness before you even feel sick.

NBA players who choose to use the ring,

will have their data shipped off to researchers

at the University of Michigan.

Those scientists will produce

an illness probability score for each player.

If they think the data indicates that someone could be sick,

they'll be flagged for additional COVID-19 testing.

- [James] The NBA's also said

that they're gonna be testing people

pretty much every day, which to me, makes me ask,

so what's the point of the Oura Ring,

except for just kind of running an experiment.

- The idea that wearable technology could predict illness

has been floating around for years.

It isn't new with COVID-19.

For a while now, researchers have been working with

devices like Fitbits, and Apple watches.

There are anecdotal stories about people who see changes

in their wearable data just before they start to feel sick.

And previous research found that there are certain patterns

in that data that tend to appear

before people with Lyme disease start showing symptoms.

Oura started looking into illness prediction

after seeing a Facebook post from a user.

Oura's CEO, Harpreet Rai told me how it all played out.

- [Harpreet] He happened to be traveling the week before,

and he opens his app up, and it says,

Hey, your readiness score is 54,

and it looks like you're actually getting a temperature.

He then starts to think like, wow,

I've never gotten a score that low,

and he didn't even feel any symptoms.

He describes himself as asymptomatic.

He's like, you know what? I was traveling.

I was in Austria, and it looks like

there was one COVID case there.

Now I'm gonna get tested, and he ended up being positive.

- So, the company pivoted to disease prediction.

Two ongoing studies at the University of California,

San Francisco, and at West Virginia University,

are checking to see if data from the ring,

along with symptom surveys,

and AI models can actually predict

that someone is getting sick, in general.

They'll also see if it can predict COVID-19 specifically,

but the NBA placed an order for the rings

before there were any published studies

proving that they worked,

which isn't surprising to experts.

This isn't the first time a pro sports league

has turned to an unproven wearable tech solution.

Athletes and pro sports leagues

have previously turned to devices

that are big on flash, but fuzzier on substance before.

A quick tech fix is appealing,

but it's especially appealing to elite athletes.

We're always striving for a sliver of competitive edge.

(high intensity techno music)

Back in 2016, a device called the halo sport

was popular with NFL players and other athletes.

It sends a stimulating current into the motor cortex

of the wearer's brain.

After wearing it for 20 minutes during your warmup,

it claims to help people build physical skills

and develop muscle memory more quickly.

So it would make training a physical skill,

like throwing a football, more efficient.

Some athletes felt like it helped them.

And there's some studies, mostly in mice,

showing that this type of electrical stimulation

of the brain can prime it for learning.

It's a plausible theory,

but it hadn't been proven by the time the NFL

started using the halo device.

Another wearable device called the Whoop,

is also used by dozens of pro athletes.

Like an Oura Ring, it monitors things like heart rate,

and sleep, and says it's algorithms

can help people optimize their workouts and their recovery.

It claims that wearers have fewer injuries,

and a lower resting heart rate.

There hasn't been much independent evaluation

to say if using the Whoop

actually does help people improve their performance,

but that didn't stop the NFL Players Association

from naming it an official recovery wearable.

Tech like this is appealing,

because it offers easy solutions to complex problems.

If strapping on a wearable can tell you

how much sleep you need to get,

to get the most out of your workout the next day,

that sounds pretty good.

At the highest level of sport,

the difference between the best and the worst athlete

can come down to millimeters.

Everyone is interested in trying anything they can

to chip away at those gaps.

For the past decade, people have increasingly

relied on science and data to push performance forward.

- [James] We seem to be increasingly interested

in athletes' data.

And this is something that is true

of their performance during the game.

It's true of the coaches and trainers

who are developing those athletes.

It's true of how the athletes internalize themselves.

They kind of become a testing ground for devices

that can measure different elements of athlete data

to try and improve their performance.

- But there are risks when that data

comes from unproven products.

In a 2016 paper, sports scientists warned

that wearables that aren't fully validated

could cause anxiety for athletes.

They might push out data that isn't quite accurate,

and people may make changes based on those numbers.

There are also privacy issues at stake.

Pro athletes definitely don't want information

on their physical health

being used in contract negotiations against them.

- [James] When the Players' Association formed,

they actually created a wearables committee

that was designed for the players

to work on developing protocols in a way

that would help the players learn from the devices

while sort of shielding that data

from being gobbled up by the organization.

- To be clear, the NBA has protections in place

around the ring data.

Coaches can't see it.

When a league like the NBA

uses something like the Oura Ring,

it boosts the credibility of the products

before we actually have the research

to know if that's warranted.

The Oura team knows this is still experimental.

The product wasn't designed

to be an illness prediction tool, but during the pandemic,

anything that can pivot to COVID-19 will,

and that ups the stakes.

- [James] The tricky issue here is because Oura

has entered into sort of this COVID-19

sort of solutionism framework,

it runs the risk of people buying it,

thinking that it's going to tell them

when they are experiencing COVID-19 related symptoms,

but I don't think that it can do that

right out of the box.

- Oura isn't explicitly making any claims

about the device's ability to predict anything.

They're more suggesting it's a possibility,

based on what they've seen so far,

but the case of the Oura user

who saw a change in their data

before they tested positive is just a story.

It takes a lot more evidence to prove

that something is actually predicting an illness.

Wearable advocates argue though,

that getting more information about your body is good.

People might still be able to see a relationship

between their own personal stats,

and when they start to feel ill.

But really, this is all just one big experiment.

Sports leagues like to experiment, and experiments are good.

They help give us important critical information,

but they also come with risks.

When we filmed this video,

there weren't any major outbreaks inside the NBA bubbles.

So I guess sticking a bunch of people in a hotel

and testing them every day, actually works.

Thanks for watching, and be sure to follow

the rest of our coronavirus coverage at theverge.com.