Oura's CEO wants its smart ring to be the doctor in your pocket

I've been wearing an Oura Ring for over a year. Whenever I'm asked about my thoughts on the device, I say that the Oura Ring is one of the few products that nearly always does exactly what it claims to do. 

The ring can predict when you're about to get sick, catch variations in your heart rate, provide an accurate list of ingredients to log after you take a photo of your breakfast, and document your physical and emotional stress in real time. I'll never forget how it captured my sky-high daytime stress levels after going through airport security for the first time wearing the Oura Ring.  

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In fact, the Oura Ring and the brand itself are a perfect example of how magical it can be when technology fulfills its promises. I told Oura's CEO Tom Hale this opinion during a recent interview and he laughed. He told me I had low expectations about technology. Maybe they'd be considered low, I thought, if Oura weren't innovating in a market position that other tech brands are now vying to copy. 

Oura's first smart ring was released in 2015. It was only last year that Samsung released a first-gen smart ring of its own. There are murmurs that Apple could be developing a ring, but that tech could take months or even years to come to fruition. While the competition catches up, Oura's Hale has grander plans -- and a broader mission to improve users' health. 

Not enough doctors

The ethos of the Oura Ring is grounded in the belief that our healthcare systems are struggling to provide primary care. "We have the most doctors relative to our population, and still we don't have enough doctors to provide primary care to people," Hale said. 

So, to address this problem, what if the Oura Ring could function as a concierge doctor, that is, a care provider that focuses on personalized, continuous, and preventative care? 

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This vision isn't restricted to the offerings of the health trackers of yesterday that kept a tally of steps taken or time asleep. The vision for Oura is less pedometer and more personalized PCP. 

The company has moved closer to this vision through upgrades in accuracy, dedication to privacy, rollouts of features like Symptom Radar that predict illness and encourage rest, partnerships with care providers, and acquisitions of key brands. 

"The power of this kind of model, where the machine is looking over you like a guardian angel or the doctor in your pocket, that's how you flip the script on the whole thing," Hale said. 

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Today the Oura Ring functions primarily as a health-tracking wearable, but the company's sights are higher. In January, the firm kickstarted a partnership with Medicare Advantage provider Essence Healthcare that gives members complimentary Oura Rings for health-tracking features. 

Upon setting up the ring, members are asked whether they'd like to share health data the smart ring collects with the Essence care team for more efficient care. When I spoke with Oura's VP of Healthcare, Jason Oberfest, about the first-of-its-kind partnership, he said similar collaborations are coming in categories like metabolic, cardiovascular, and women's health. 

A central focus on privacy

As these announcements and developments take shape, Oura announced recently it was moving some of its functions from cloud-based artificial intelligence (AI) to on-device AI, thanks to a partnership with webAI for safer, faster, and more secure computation and storage. "We have no motive or incentive to use people's data for any other purpose than helping them with their health training," Hale said. 

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While you might think of Oura as a tech company, Hale said he thinks of his company as more like a health or healthcare brand. Of course, Oura is not actually in the business of providing healthcare, but it does work with covered entities that do. 

That approach means its privacy policies and standards must be as secure as possible, particularly given the fast-changing and uncertain AI landscape. "It's almost incumbent upon companies like Oura to do the right thing, even in advance of regulation," Hale said.  

Oura's evolution from a tech to a healthcare brand reflects a greater trend across the IT industry. Last week, Apple-owned Beats launched its Powerbeats Pro 2, workout earbuds with heart rate sensors. Last month, wearable brand Withings announced the launch of Cardio Check-Up, a feature that sends a user's heart health data to a board-certified cardiologist for review and feedback. 

Last year, Apple added a hearing loss detection feature to its AirPods Pro 2 and a sleep apnea detection feature to its Apple Watch Series 10 and Ultra 2. Both features, which received FDA clearance last year, can provide user data to doctors for diagnosis and treatment. 

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So, why are all these tech brands all-in on health functionalities? Hale had a few ideas. The always-on nature of a wearable like an Oura Ring allows for uninhibited data capture that reveals the intricacy of a person's health in a way that a 30-minute visit and vitals capture at a PCP will not. 

The technology is also getting more accurate and clinical-grade. Medical professionals are adopting this kind of technology. Cast all these factors against a pandemic that exposed the fragility of the US healthcare system, in a country that spends twice the average on care as other wealthy nations, and the focus on new functionalities starts to make sense. 

Doctor in your pocket 

Late last year, Oura announced strategic acquisitions and partnerships with Veri, a metabolic health program, and Dexcom, a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) maker. 

Originally used strictly by people with diabetes or insulin resistance, CGMs are now becoming a more popular tool for health tracking. That's because these tools stick on a person's arm and provide instantaneous data about how their body responds to the foods they consume. CGMs also prove, Hale said, that individuals respond differently to food, stress, or exercise. 

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Similar to how the Oura Ring provides personalized insights into your sleep and activity, a CGM offers insights into how food impacts your energy and body. Most importantly, the tech proves that there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution to health. 

"Science has been practiced for centuries on the averages," said Hale. "We're moving towards a world where the n-of-1 is really powerful." (N-of-1 refers to a clinical trial that studies one individual to find the most optimal solution or diagnosis.)

"We think this vision of being the doctor in your pocket, or whatever you want to call it, is going to happen. It may not happen all at once or everywhere all at once, but it is happening," Hale said. 

"It's going to solve a really big problem in the world, which is there's not enough care to go around. If we can have some small role in that, and do that in a way that engenders trust and confidence, that's our vision."