Finnish tech startup Oura Health has signed a number of partnerships in the last year to expand the visibility and use of its Oura Ring wearable, a biometric sleep and fitness tracker that is unique in its ability to monitor user temperature. Oura has sold over 150,000 rings to date and has 7 patent documents in the Consumer Sleep sector, with its most recently published application filed back in September of 2019.
In April of 2020, Oura partnered with (University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) to distribute the Oura rings to frontline healthcare workers for a COVID-19 detection study. A few months later, the NBA and WNBA both partnered with Oura to provide the rings to their athletes, who are currently staying in an isolated "bubble" to allow league games to continue. To facilitate this, Oura developed a "risk score" that specifically assesses the likelihood that a player has COVID-19 based on the ring's readings in order to abstract and protect other metrics that players may not want to share. Oura also offered its risk score and wearable to NASCAR, signing a multiyear partnership in August of 2020. Just this week, Oura completed an agreement with the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), which the league said was in the works even before the coronavirus pandemic.
The partnerships show that Oura's technology is valuable in the fields of healthcare and professional sports, lending legitimacy to the company's products. Fitbit, a leader in the healthcare wearables sector, has a much larger patent portfolio (212 documents to Oura's 7) but has not worked with professional sports leagues. Apple has also recently announced health studies with multiple universities and the government of Singapore. As these partnerships continue, they may spur new innovation as well as appeal to everyday consumers. You can get an early view of these developments by following movement on the Magic Number® Patent Radian®.
