What if your Apple Watch or iPhone could act as a proxy pregnancy test? Not to replace an official blood test, of course, but perhaps as an early form of early detection.
A new Apple-backed study analyzed wearables data with AI and found the method predicted whether participants were pregnant with 92% accuracy. Rather than only looking at biometric data, such as heart rate or temperature, it also layered in behavioral data. That means how often you exercise, when you go to sleep, and your walking gait, for example.
“The combination is remarkably performant for pregnancy prediction,” the study says. “Pregnancy results in substantial changes…to an individual’s behavior. Hence, this task acts as a clear example of the complementary nature of modeling both types of data.”
Diabetes prediction was the second most successful (82%), followed by infection (76%), and injury (69%). The study is not yet peer reviewed, Apple hasn’t announced plans to use it, but it could show the potential for AI to detect new health patterns. After all, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr says he wants “every American” to get a wearable. (Apple would like that!)
Apple Watch (Credit: Emily Forlini)
The AI model—dubbed the “wearable health behavior foundation model” (WBM)—was trained on behavioral data from 162,000 participants and “over 15 billion hourly measurements,” collected through the Apple Heart and Movement Study on the Apple Watch and iPhone. For the pregnancy piece, it looked at data from 430 self-reported pregnancies from 385 participants, along with 25,225 control participants who were not pregnant.
The participants consented to the data use. (You have to download the Apple Research app to join the study.) However, women’s health tech and privacy is a thorny issue.
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Some pregnancy- and period-tracking apps have misused user data, and women are highly skeptical them, one study found. For example, in 2023, Federal Trade Commission (FTC) busted popular ovulation tracking app Premom for selling user data without consent. Trust in period-tracking apps declined further after Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade over concerns the data could be used to prosecute abortions in certain states, according to the FTC.
It remains to be seen if women ever look to an Apple Watch to predict their pregnancy. However, this is a space Apple is investing in. It added pregnancy tracking to its devices last fall, and has offered menstrual cycle tracking in the Health app since 2019, Business Insider reports.
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About Emily Forlini
Senior Reporter
