Smart ring maker Ultrahuman to roll out biological-age model across UAE
Ultrahuman has partnered with Abu Dhabi’s Public Health Center to develop a model that estimates biological age using clinical biomarkers and wearable data. The two-year project matters because it could take the Bengaluru company’s health algorithms beyond its smart-ring customers, with the model eventually intended for people across the UAE.
The model will examine signals linked to sleep, activity, cardiovascular health and metabolism, and is designed to work with different wearables as well as clinical tests. Ultrahuman says people may eventually access their health age through government digital-health platforms TAMM and Sahatna; research and clinical validation will take two years, with no rollout timetable yet. The company has sold about 800,000 rings globally, and says the UAE accounts for 4% to 5% of its revenue.
- Ultrahuman and Abu Dhabi are developing a biological-age model.
- It will combine clinical biomarkers with data from different wearables.
- Research and validation are planned over two years.
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Ultrahuman, a Bengaluru-based company, makes smart rings that track various health metrics such as sleep and heart rate. It has now partnered with Abu Dhabi's Public Health Center to develop a model that estimates "biological age" – a measure of how old someone's body effectively is based on health signals rather than their actual years.
The importance of this partnership lies in its potential reach. Rather than being limited to Ultrahuman's existing ring customers, the biological-age model could eventually be made available to many more people across the UAE through government health platforms. This would bring such health assessment tools to a much broader population than currently has access to them.
The model will examine signals related to sleep, activity, cardiovascular health and metabolism, using information from both wearable devices and clinical tests. Developing and validating the tool is expected to take approximately two years, though no public rollout date has been announced yet.
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The case for
Proponents argue this represents a valuable advancement in personalised preventive healthcare, using validated biomarkers to help citizens understand their health status and make informed decisions. Integrating wearable data with clinical systems through a government partnership ensures proper oversight and accessibility, potentially enabling early intervention for those at greater health risk. The approach respects individual agency whilst providing public-health authorities with population-level insights to improve policy.
The case against
Sceptics raise fundamental concerns about integrating intimate biometric data with government platforms, particularly without established protections against mission creep or data repurposing. They question whether biological-age estimates—still contested in medical literature—should drive healthcare decisions, and worry that proprietary algorithms could enable discrimination without transparent validation. The two-year development period, they contend, is insufficient to establish adequate safeguards for systems involving widespread personal health data.