Executive Briefing
Oura and the future of health
The startup behind this $300 sleep tracking ring wants to “transform your health” and help save the NBA. Can it win in Apple’s world?
By Dan Frommer on Tuesday, July 7, 2020 at 11:00 am
A few months ago, as the Covid-19 outbreak was getting scary in the US, I started having trouble falling asleep for the first time in my life. And once I finally managed to drift off each night… the dreams! They were something else.
With everything going on — pandemic crisis, stuck at home, existential uncertainty — I thought this would be an interesting time to start tracking my sleep and see what, if anything, I could learn from it.
So for the past 12 weeks, I’ve been wearing an Oura ring, which tracks your vitals and activity — with a special focus on sleep — on loan from the company.
Oura is a $300 ring-shaped computer that you wear on your finger — whichever one you want — with a bunch of sensors built in, measuring your heart rate, breathing rate, body temperature, and movement.
The ring, which comes in eight sizes, syncs with the free Oura app on your smartphone via Bluetooth — no subscription required — which also serves as a basic daily activity tracker.
But its main thing is detailed sleep tracking and analysis. Oura measures and illustrates your different sleep stages — deep, light, REM — and highlights when you’re awake in the middle of the night. And in the morning, it calculates an overall score for each night’s sleep session and a “readiness” score for the day.
Before, I used to check email and Twitter first thing after I woke up. Now it’s my Oura score.
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