Lehigh Univ. and Ultrahuman partner on wearable tech to advance women's health

Wearable tech can play a significant role in addressing women's health, particularly when it comes to understanding the physiological effects of their menstrual cycles. Assistant Professor Dhruv Seshadri and his team in Lehigh University's Department of Bioengineering have partnered with Ultrahuman, an India-based company that calls itself "the world's most comprehensive self-quantification platform," on two projects designed to address areas of unmet need relating to women's health.

The first project uses the company's wearable technology to understand how female athletes respond to training, and how factors such as the menstrual cycle may affect recovery and injury risk.

"There's a significant need for objective data that can ultimately be used for training optimization protocols to mitigate injuries, especially given that female athletes are two to eight times more likely to tear their anterior cruciate ligament compared to their male counterparts," says Seshadri, an assistant professor of bioengineering in Lehigh's P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science. "And to date, very little is known about the effect of menstrual cycles on injury."

"This is why I went into academia, to help people," says Seshadri, who describes his path to bioengineering in a recent episode of Lehigh's Rossin Connection Podcast. "And more than ever, the world needs this type of meaningful partnership between industry and higher education." 

Quantifying demands, supporting well-being

To that end, Seshadri and his team, in collaboration with Ultrahuman, have equipped 13 female athletes with Ultrahuman's Ring AIR. Sensors in the device, which is worn on the index finger, gather data on sleep, heart rate, movement, skin temperature, and more. The data is collected longitudinally to help researchers identify trends, especially in relation to menstrual cycles. Lehigh researchers will analyze the data, generate models, and provide actionable insights into how athletes are responding—or not—to their training.

"When we look at the overall scope of an athlete, there's the load-response relationship," says Seshadri. "We're trying to quantify the overall demands and recovery profiles of an athlete to support their holistic well-being."

The team will work closely with coaches, providing concise, data-driven feedback to help guide training decisions. For instance, data derived from an athlete under the dual stresses of midterms and heavy training may reveal disrupted sleep and elevated metrics such as resting heart rate that, in combination, can increase their chances of soft-tissue injury. In that case, the coach may decrease the player's training intensity and/or direct them toward more rehab.

"We want to normalize conversations around women's health, while giving athletes data to articulate and support their subjective experiences," says Hayley Whitney '24, a PhD student in Seshadri's lab who leads the project. "We also want to give trainers and coaches the tools to support every aspect of the athlete. Partnering with Ultrahuman has been exciting because we're able to discuss what's needed and truly useful."

Seshadri also emphasizes the importance of leveling the playing field in sports science. "A lot of this research has focused on professional or elite athletes. But schools like Lehigh, and their athletes, deserve the same opportunities. We want to make this technology and data accessible and meaningful for everyone."

In the second project, Seshadri and his team are leading an initiative in South India that blends research, education, and service to address long-standing taboos around women's health—particularly menstrual hygiene and maternal care.

With support from Lehigh's Office of International Affairs, and again in partnership with Ultrahuman, the multisite study aims to empower young women through education and data-driven health tools. The research component of the initiative targets college students and young healthcare workers—many of whom have never participated in formal research—and uses the Ring AIR to track vitals and menstrual cycles. The group of 22 participants will wear the ring continuously for nine months, and Seshadri's team will collect and analyze the data and educate the participants on what the results mean for their health.

"Wearable technologies have the potential to revolutionize women's health by offering continuous, real-time monitoring and enabling early intervention," says Rupa Ravi, a global health consultant for the Seshadri Lab. "In maternal and pregnancy monitoring, these devices can track critical indicators such as blood sugar levels in gestational diabetes and blood pressure in hypertensive disorders, providing valuable data that can drive timely interventions and significantly improve outcomes. Beyond maternal health, wearables also empower individuals to track menstrual cycles, manage pain, and monitor symptoms related to gynecological conditions. This real-time, personalized care is especially critical in remote and low-resource settings, where healthcare access is often limited and burdened by significant barriers."

For the education component of the project, Seshadri and Ravi co-taught a short course in two cities titled Global Health and Bioengineering for Empowering Women's Health, reaching more than 80 individuals. The sessions covered menstrual health and education, wearable technology, and the bioengineering program at Lehigh.

"We wanted to assess the knowledge gaps in this field," Seshadri says. "We collected a robust data set to identify critical path elements in women's health, where engineering can help bridge the gap with current healthcare challenges. Our goal is to ultimately develop low-cost, scalable, and equitable technologies to advance women's health."

The third arm of the project focused on direct service—delivering menstrual kits that included reusable, biodegradable pads and wipes and iron-rich sweets to impoverished tribal communities facing limited access to resources, cultural stigmas, and domestic violence.

"We wanted to better understand their living conditions and their thoughts on menstrual hygiene and menstrual education," he says. "We also learned that they're very interested in using wearable technology and partnering with us to develop tools that could potentially help them."

The ultimate goal, he says, is to scale the entire initiative to all of India and use it as a way to break taboos around menstruation, while developing wearables that can have a measurable impact on women's lives.