Latest news with #Oura
Business Standard
16 hours ago
- Business
- Business Standard
Former Oura CEO, Harpreet Singh Rai, Joins Loop to Accelerate Preventive Health Innovation
NewsVoir Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], June 27: Loop, the insurance and healthcare company on a mission to add 20 healthy years to the lives of working Indians, has announced that Harpreet Singh Rai, former CEO of health-tracking pioneer Oura and an early investor in Loop, has joined Loop as President, Healthcare. Harpreet brings a decade of experience in building and scaling preventive health solutions that merge science, data, and human behavior. As CEO of Oura from 2018 to 2021, he led the launch of the company's 2nd and 3rd generation rings, selling over 1 million units. In his new role, Harpreet will lead the development of Loop's healthcare products, working closely with Loop's medical, product, and engineering teams. His focus will be on creating seamless, engaging experiences that help people take charge of their health. "India's workforce loses 20 years compared to global peers; not because of destiny, but because our system profits from sickness rather than health. Harpreet has built consumer health products that people actually use and love. That's exactly the leadership we need to scale prevention beyond corporate walls," said Mayank Kale, Co-founder and CEO at Loop. Before Oura, Harpreet spent nine years as a technology portfolio manager at Eminence Capital, focusing on healthcare and technology investments. He began his career in Morgan Stanley's M & A group and holds a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan. His rare blend of engineering, investing, and health leadership uniquely equips him to accelerate Loop's prevention-first approach. "Loop is building something fundamentally different--Mayank and the team have a unique lens to improve healthcare for India. I'm excited to help make healthcare more accessible, engaging, and measurable for millions of working Indians. This is how we add decades to lives--one person, one family, one company at a time," said Harpreet Singh Rai. Loop is on a mission to add 20 healthy years to the Indian workforce. By combining best-in-class insurance with unlimited primary care and data-led prevention, Loop empowers over 850,000 employees at 1,200+ companies to live longer, healthier lives. Backed by global investors including Y Combinator, Khosla Ventures, Elevation Capital, and General Catalyst, Loop is redefining corporate healthcare by making prevention profitable, outcomes measurable, and vibrant health possible for every team in India.
Fashion Value Chain
a day ago
- Business
- Fashion Value Chain
Former Oura CEO, Harpreet Singh Rai, Joins Loop to Accelerate Preventive Health Innovation
Loop, the insurance and healthcare company on a mission to add 20 healthy years to the lives of working Indians, has announced that Harpreet Singh Rai, former CEO of health-tracking pioneer Oura and an early investor in Loop, has joined Loop as President, Healthcare. Harpreet brings a decade of experience in building and scaling preventive health solutions that merge science, data, and human behavior. As CEO of Oura from 2018 to 2021, he led the launch of the company's 2nd and 3rd generation rings, selling over 1 million units. Harpreet Singh Rai In his new role, Harpreet will lead the development of Loop's healthcare products, working closely with Loop's medical, product, and engineering teams. His focus will be on creating seamless, engaging experiences that help people take charge of their health. 'Indias workforce loses 20 years compared to global peers; not because of destiny, but because our system profits from sickness rather than health. Harpreet has built consumer health products that people actually use and love. Thats exactly the leadership we need to scale prevention beyond corporate walls,' said Mayank Kale, Co-founder and CEO at Loop. Before Oura, Harpreet spent nine years as a technology portfolio manager at Eminence Capital, focusing on healthcare and technology investments. He began his career in Morgan Stanley's M&A group and holds a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan. His rare blend of engineering, investing, and health leadership uniquely equips him to accelerate Loop's prevention-first approach. 'Loop is building something fundamentally different-Mayank and the team have a unique lens to improve healthcare for India. I'm excited to help make healthcare more accessible, engaging, and measurable for millions of working Indians. This is how we add decades to lives-one person, one family, one company at a time,' said Harpreet Singh Rai. About Loop Loop is on a mission to add 20 healthy years to the Indian workforce. By combining best-in-class insurance with unlimited primary care and data-led prevention, Loop empowers over 850,000 employees at 1,200+ companies to live longer, healthier lives. Backed by global investors including Y Combinator, Khosla Ventures, Elevation Capital, and General Catalyst, Loop is redefining corporate healthcare by making prevention profitable, outcomes measurable, and vibrant health possible for every team in India.
Mint
a day ago
- Health
- Mint
Next-gen smart rings are getting smarter, but can they really replace fitness bands and smartwatches?
Smart rings have spent many years on the sidelines of wearable technology, mostly appealing to early adopters who didn't mind a few limitations. But in 2025 the picture is changing. Brands such as Oura, Ultrahuman, and Samsung have all brought out models that promise more than tracking sleep or daily steps. This is a whole new batch of wearable devices which aims to compete directly with fitness bands and smartwatches by adding more sensors and working better with daily routines. People like smart rings because they are simple. A ring stays on your finger without flashing alerts or feeling heavy. You still get heart rate, activity, and sleep tracking, but no constant screens or reminders. For many, that feels easier to live with. Recent launches have also moved the technology forward. The Ultrahuman Ring Air and Samsung's Galaxy Ring stand out among this year's releases. Both feature more precise sensors, longer lasting batteries, and ways to sync data with health apps. Samsung plans to connect its ring to SmartThings and Samsung Health, so all information can be pulled into one place. It's an early sign that rings may soon work alongside other devices in the home. Smart rings still have some downsides. The biggest one is not having a screen. Some users like to see fewer alerts, while others want to see step counts, heart rate, reminders quickly. If you need to control music or read messages, a smart ring feels limited next to a smartwatch. In smart rings, battery life is one area where they often do well. Without screens to drain power, many last several days before needing a charge. For those people who track sleep, that matters. You don't have to think about plugging in a device every night or swapping it out in the morning. A ring can stay on around the clock and keep recording data without gaps. Apart from that, accuracy has improved too. During activities like walking or gentle workout most new smart rings track heart rate and movement consistently. But if you are doing intense workout and sports activity with quick hands movements then reading can be less accurate in that case. Fitness bands and watches still work better here because they have more sensors touching the skin. Today, brands are also testing new features. Oura has started working with fitness apps to make syncing easier and better. Ultrahuman is adding metabolic tracking, so you can see how daily routines affect glucose levels. Samsung is expected to tie its ring into a wider group of connected products. These steps show that smart rings are quickly moving past the phase of being a curiosity. For now, smart rings are in between two categories. They do more than basic fitness trackers but less than smartwatches. They do not replace the tools and feedback of a smartwatch or a fitness band. But they do give a way to track your health without wearing something that needs attention all the time. When sensors and software improve together, smart rings can measure things that only wrist devices could do before. Over time, this makes rings more competitive, and the difference between smart rings and other wearable devices will likely shrink. Smart rings might not be right for everyone, but they've turned into a simple way to keep an eye on your health each day.
Time Magazine
2 days ago
- Business
- Time Magazine
How Oura Keeps Pushing Smart Ring Tech Forward
On a Monday morning in late April, Oura CEO Tom Hale was feeling well-rested despite having stayed up later than usual the night before to catch the latest episode of The Last of Us . Clicking through data logged by his smart ring, he ticked off stats he was pleased with. Hale had gotten close to eight hours of sleep ('pretty rare' for him these days), including nearly 90 minutes of deep sleep. His 'efficiency'—how much time in bed he was actually sleeping—was 91 out of 100. 'My timing was perfect,' he says. 'I didn't get up in the middle of the night, which is a very typical thing for me.' Hale's sleep stats are the very reason he decided he wanted to join Oura, the Finland-based company that pioneered the smart ring category. During a stressful period in the fall of 2021, he was having trouble sleeping. He bought an Oura Ring and then made a handful of behavior changes based on its feedback about his sleep habits, like no longer drinking alcohol to unwind in the evenings. Within six weeks, he experienced dramatic results. The fix 'made me want to be a part of the company,' he says. It just so happened that Oura was searching for a new CEO, and the company is now thriving under Hale's leadership. In December, Oura announced its member base and revenue more than doubled in 2024. It's now sold more than 2.5 million rings, including the Oura 4, which was released in October. That device introduced the company's 'smart sensing' technology, which tracks blood oxygen levels, heart and respiratory rates, skin temperature changes, and movement. TIME spoke to Hale about what he attributes the company's success to, how health data can spur action, and why Oura is prioritizing women's health. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. These days, the ring can collect data on more than 20 biometrics. Which are you most excited about? I'm trying to age gracefully, and the two things I'm concerned about are heart health and metabolic health. I hate to admit this, but I have a sweet tooth. So for me, the metabolic part is controlling my blood sugar. Right now, I'm wearing a continuous glucose monitor. As of May, our partnership with Dexcom supports integration of that data, which means it can flow between Dexcom devices and the Oura ring and app. What I don't like to see is an enormous blood-sugar spike. I've learned there are some foods that aren't what you might consider to be a sugar bomb, but still have that effect. Rice turned out to cause a huge spike. Just by dialing back rice in my diet or consuming smaller portions, I'm able to stay within my range. That's important, because I don't want to go into prediabetes. The partnership with [glucose monitor maker] Dexcom seems like a natural fit—two companies that value data. We met with the CEO of Dexcom, and when he and his staff walked into the room, they were all wearing Oura rings. I was like, 'Well, I'm wearing a Dexcom sensor right now.' That technology was developed for people with diabetes. We want to be part of the solution that keeps people from even getting to that stage. Part of that is understanding which foods are going to affect you in a very discreet way. The thing that's so powerful about this tool is that your glucose and your glycemic response and your insulin response are going to be different based on how rested you are, what activity you've done and when you did that activity. Your genetics and biome also play a role. So a big part of what we're trying to do is educate people. You've described the Oura Ring as a doctor in the pocket—a tool to help scale up preventive care. What exactly does that mean? Wearables are a tool—they're not the answer for everything. But they're a very powerful tool, both from the perspective of predicting things or giving you feedback, and educating you and motivating you to do the things that are hardest in preventive care—changing behaviors. For example, I stopped drinking alcohol [at night], and that was a behavioral change rooted in 30 years of my adult life. I changed it very quickly when I saw that alcohol ruined my REM sleep. We're not trying to be like doctors—but the fact of the matter is, there simply aren't enough in the U.S. With Oura, you have something on your body that's monitoring you and knows when you have a deviation from the norm. I would call it algorithmic care. There's a set of conditions in your biometrics, and we can say, 'Hey, you're getting sick, you're getting a cold, maybe you need to be checked out for something a little more serious. Maybe you should go talk to a doctor and share this data.' It's ultimately a tool that's part of your overall care. I've heard Oura staffers call what the company does 'giving your body a voice.' Is that a common phrase around the office? We say it all the time. What's really different about Oura is the fidelity of the information because of overnight tracking, as well as the accuracy of the finger [as a data collection site]. Getting it right builds trust. Lots of competitors are popping up, yet Oura's membership keeps growing. Do you attribute that to the trust you're describing? It's a couple things. If the Oura Ring says to you, 'Hey, it looks like you're getting sick,' you might go, 'Oh, I feel fine.' But two days later, when you're on the couch surrounded by Kleenex, you realize: 'It told me something I didn't already know.' That's the magic. The degree to which Oura can surprise you with something you don't know happens frequently and is, on balance, more often right than it is wrong. It's not always perfect, but it's pretty close. That gives us an edge. The other thing that's really important is that we nailed the use cases for women. How do you see women using the ring? Maybe in your late teens or early 20s, it's about knowing when you're going to have your cycle and planning for contraception. Then, as you enter your late 20s or 30s, maybe it's conception. A lot of Oura customers are trying to conceive. One of the things Oura does is it gives you a really good signal about your fertile window—which is actually our first U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved feature. Then there's pregnancy, a real focus for us this year. How do your biometrics change during pregnancy? What should you expect? Is this something maybe you need to talk to your OB-GYN about? But our vision is that we should be able to serve women and give their body a voice over pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause and menopause—that entire timeframe. Are there stories you've heard from Oura users that really stand out in your mind? So many. There was the grandfather who started to see his metrics decline. His grandkid was looking at it and said, 'Hey, grandpa, this doesn't look good. We should get you checked out.' It turns out he was on the brink of a myocardial infarction [heart attack]. There's a Paralympian who was visiting his parents at home. He's a sprinter, and he's like, 'You know, I'm not feeling great.' He's looking at his app and it's saying, 'Major signs, major signs, something is going on,' and he's like, 'No, I don't want to tell my parents because they'll put pressure on me to suck it up and keep competing.' It turns out he had appendicitis, and he basically credited Oura with helping him have the courage to say, 'I need to get this checked out. Something is going on.' Those kinds of stories aren't strictly speaking happy stories. But people get the opportunity to have agency in their health journey and to take action. That's really powerful. Disclosure: Investors in Oura include TIME owner and co-chair Marc Benioff
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
How (not) to track your health
You'd think I would have been more self-conscious about walking around New York City while wearing no fewer than six health trackers at a time. For the first six months of this year, I wore smart rings on both hands, fitness bands on both wrists, biosensors plugged into my arms, and sometimes even headphones that monitored my brain activity. I was a little embarrassed, sure, but mostly I was anxious. This health tracking ensemble was part of an experiment — a failed one, I'll admit. By tracking as many health metrics as possible, I thought I'd find a way to feel younger, more energetic, and more fit. Products like the Oura ring, the Whoop band, the Apple Watch, and a growing variety of continuous glucose monitors promise to track things like your heart rate, body temperature, and metabolic health metrics, while their companion apps crunch that data into actionable advice about how to live your life. If one health tracker is good for you, theoretically, half a dozen should be great. What I learned from obsessively tracking my health for half a year is that paying too much attention to what your body is doing can ruin your life. Or at least it can ruin your understanding of healthy living, since too much information can steer your brain toward assuming the worst. Looking at the readouts from these fitness tracking apps sent me down dark holes of Googling symptoms and self-diagnosing conditions that my doctor assured me I did not have. But, I reasoned, he did not have all of the data that the health tracker collected, so he could be wrong, and AI, which is increasingly embedded in this tech, is very good at diagnosing things. I wouldn't caution against any and all health tracking. Now that the experiment is over, I'm only ever wearing one health tracker at a time. I've gained a new appreciation for how technology could become an essential part of healthy living in the near future, if you do it right. I'm not saying I have all the answers, but there are some things I would recommend to tracker-curious readers. And there are some things I would avoid at all costs. Out of over a dozen gadgets tested, the one device that I added to my daily routine is an Oura ring that I only wear at night. (During the day, I wear an Apple Watch.) An Oura ring is a sensor-packed smart ring that measures a lot of the same things as a smartwatch, but is easier to wear while you sleep. The ring keeps track of your heart rate and movement to sense how well you sleep. Exactly how it does this is controversial with some sleep doctors, but it nonetheless generates a sleep score, which is oddly compelling. The first thing I do every morning, I'm almost embarrassed to say, is check my sleep score in the Oura app. If it's bad, I feel vindicated for feeling groggy. If it's good, I feel energized, even if I still feel groggy. The sleep score is a made-up metric, one that may or may not be correct based on how Oura's algorithms calculate various factors, but paying attention to the score was helpful for me. 'The way that we think about how we've slept can really make us feel better,' Thea Gallagher, a psychologist at NYU Langone Health, told me. 'If we think we've had a good night of sleep, we will actually feel better physically and mentally and emotionally.' Placebo effect notwithstanding, I'm also surprised by how much I listen to an app when it tells me to go to bed. Thanks to the Oura app, I've developed better sleeping habits, and frankly, I feel better. When I first got an Apple Watch, I liked the rings that track how much you move. Moving more seemed like an easy goal that would improve my health. But some trackers seem to collect data for the sake of collecting data, with no particular objective. Continuous glucose monitors, or CGMs, have been lifesavers for people with diabetes for years, but a growing list of companies sell them to non-diabetics over the counter. These biosensors stick a filament into your skin that measures the amount of glucose in your interstitial fluid, which can give you a good guess about what your blood glucose is at any given moment. If you don't know a lot about how metabolism works, the readouts can be horrifying. The first bowl of cereal I ate spiked my blood sugar outside of the normal range, which threw me into a panic — a panic that didn't entirely subside until I stopped wearing these sensors. Part of what fueled that anxiety was the fact that I didn't actually know how to make sense of the data that these monitors spit out. Most of them alert you when your glucose is spiking and then give you some kind of score, but it's not clear what a good score indicates other than that you've managed to eat fewer carbs, probably. The whole experience can feel like a high-tech diet. 'There's not a lot of time and effort spent on figuring out what is the actual question that I have that's really important to me and that I'm willing to go through some some effort and troubleshooting in order to come out the other side with a genuine discovery that I can use in my regular life,' said Gary Wolf, a tech journalist and founder of Quantified Self, a community of people who have been tracking their health metrics since the mid-2000s. Health tracking isn't confined to wearable devices. Some companies, like Viome, Function Health, and Ultrahuman, are getting into the labwork business. The idea is that you can pay for extra testing and get all the results back in an app that promises to help you understand the intricate details of your gut microbiome or metabolic health. Some assign you a biological age based on your test results, and all of them cost many hundreds of dollars. I did a battery of tests through Viome, including the gut microbiome test, which involved filling up little vials with poop and blood and dropping them at a post office. (Disclosure: Viome waived the fees for me.) The results seemed to tell me nothing that I didn't already reveal on the pre-test questionnaire, but I did have the opportunity to buy some very expensive supplements to address my problem areas. I don't recommend doing any of this. If you've ever seen someone wearing a band around their wrist with a little hunk of plastic where the watch face should be, you've seen a Whoop band. This fitness-forward health tracker works a lot like a smartwatch without a screen, but the app is geared toward gym rats. The app not only gives you a strain score that measures how hard you've worked out, it also encourages you to recover. It costs $30 a month to enjoy all the features. It's not just Whoop that wants you to keep paying. Oura also charges a subscription fee to unlock all of its features, but it's just $6. Apple has the Fitness+ subscription for $10, but that includes a bunch of classes, not unique features on the Watch. All of these little fees add up over time, so if you really just want basic functionality, skip the subscription. Without it, you can still see your sleep, readiness, and activity scores on an Oura ring. (That's all I look at anyway.) The Whoop band doesn't work at all if you don't pay. The best advice I got from the many experts I talked to throughout my health tracking journey was to take off the devices from time to time. The absolute flood of information about my health often made me uneasy, and it even led to some disordered behaviors, especially when it came to tracking my glucose levels and seeing my readings start veering away from normal levels. Still, I wondered if I shouldn't intervene somehow. 'Sometimes atypical results found by wearables can make people anxious, and it may be difficult to offer them definite reassurance for these results,' said Dr. David Klonoff, president of the Diabetes Technology Society. 'If traditional medicine cannot provide definite answers, then these people sometimes turn to natural or alternative medicine.' Some health tracking companies want to take your money every month to keep using their services. Some want to sell you the latest generation of their device. Some want to sell you supplements. They all want you to keep using the trackers and apps, even if they're not necessarily making you healthier. That's good to keep in mind. So check in with yourself when you're wearing a health tracker. Take it off, and leave it off for a while. Without a torrent of alerts telling you to stand, sleep, or eat, you may actually feel better. A version of this story was also published in the User Friendly newsletter. 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