Venture: Ring of Health
ouraring.com
As we are trying to adapt to the world we live in, tech companies will be adapting to assisting in how we life our new lives. Oura Ring has been in the spotlight recently as the it has been used by both the NBA and the WNBA for preventing outbreaks of COVID-19. Oura Ring is a health tracker that is not like the typical watch health tracker. This ring is very well hidden, and the user enjoys the lightweight and hidden features while having a week-long battery span. From tracking your sleep to your calories you burn and constant temperature monitoring, this ring has many features and can be utilized to maintain control over COVID-19.
Co-founder and president Petteri Lahtela says he was motivated to develop the Oura ring after his experience working on IT systems for chronic disease management, where he learned about the link between chronic stress and the onset of disease, and the importance of getting good sleep. “We wanted to develop something that would help people understand how their body responds to their lifestyle”.
This Finland based company was founded in 2013 but is only now only getting a lot of discussion. Consumers love wearable tech and there are many testaments to that, from the Apple Watch to Fitbit, consumers enjoy seeing the statistics for the day of what they have done. Especially now when health is a priority now more than ever for many people with COVID-19. One of the main proponents in getting this product in the limelight has been the NBA, Oura CEO Harpreet Singh Rai stated “As the NBA heads to Walt Disney World in Florida, the league is making available a host of technological bells and whistles to both players and staff including the Oura Ring. The league has ordered over 1,000 Oura Rings. They felt like giving the players and staff an added rate of protection and frankly a piece of mind”.
The NBA players were offered Oura rings and allowed to participate in data gathering, but there is not to suggest that this ring will detect any symptoms of COVID-19. As the ring will just monitor the persons health but will not have any exact trigger when it believes that a person has become ill. Users, consumers and patients should understand that they cannot rely on the Oura Ring or any wearable medical device to reliably predict the development of COVID-19.
The Oura Ring connects to the users phone through the Oura app. The app offers daily Readiness score, a combination of multiple measurements. Originally the Oura Ring was marketed as a wellness ring that focused primarily on sleep. They have now made a pivot into the future of wearables and the only aspect that makes Oura stand out amongst the rest is the fact that it can read temperatures. It does not mean that it can take an exact reading but it tracks a relative temperature state each night while sleeping and shows trends in your daily temperature.
Oura was able to adapt their app just for the NBA and come out with a different version so that the ring will connect with others so that the coaches and managers can access, showing a risk score calculated from some sets of data: temperature, resting heart rate, respiration and heart rate variability.
If Oura will be able to adapt its product to certain groups and working among sport teams and companies then they could see a bright future ahead of them. Lots of industries are looking for some sort of tech that can keep an eye on its employees when it comes to their health and this ring may just be the solution in solving that problem.
A lot of consumer reviews stated that they enjoy the product and the fact that it is a ring is what makes it stand out among the crowd. When traveling it makes it easier to not worry about a watch around your wrist. With the pros there are also cons as consumers complain that when they start working out or doing anything active the ring will have to be taken off. This is disappointing because a lot of people like to track their workouts.
If we look at Oura competitors, they both are used for active work and allow for people to see how many calories and steps they take when they are working out. The Apple Watch is the leader in wearable tech as the watch is compatible with the iPhone so it makes a seamless process for the user to be able to use the products and not worry about any issues about the products working together. Motiv is also a 24/7 fitness ring but has recently gotten bought out is no longer selling to consumers.
In order for the Oura ring to make a dent in the market they will have to market to helping consumers during COVID-19 and get those customers to continue using their product It will have to be able to allow people to use it during there workouts as well so that people will leave it on all the time rather than having to take it off and put it on again. When people started taking off and putting on the product then soon they will stop using the product at all.
Overall, the ring is a great way to monitor people’s health and keep track of large groups when in order to make sure that everyone’s health is good for work. I believe that they will need to improve more of their work with ring and make sure that the tech for the ring is up to date so that the people using it will enjoy it and that it can be worn all the time.