SAN FRANCISCO– ŌURA, the company behind Oura Ring, the revolutionary smart ring that delivers accurate, personalized health data, insights, and daily guidance into sleep, activity, readiness, and recovery, today announced the rollout of three new features: Daytime Stress, Reflections, and Resilience, which allow members to understand when and how they experience stress and recovery in their daily lives, balance daily behaviors that build resilience, and avoid the negative impacts of chronic stress. The company will debut their new feature set and capabilities, as well as a first look at its new Brushed Titanium colorway, in a main stage presentation at the 2023 HLTH Conference in Las Vegas featuring ŌURA CEO Tom Hale, stress and well-being expert, Dr. Elissa Epel, and Thrive Global CEO, author, and longtime ŌURA member, Arianna Huffington.
“Hardware and software are equally important to the ŌURA experience. Today, we have exciting news on both fronts, each stemming from requests from our community. Members asked us for a way to manage daytime stress and support recovery, and we listened,” said Tom Hale, Chief Executive Officer, ŌURA. “Our members expect innovative features and breakthrough science blended with sleek, subtle design. The beauty and durability of Brushed Titanium appeals to anyone seeking an understated, yet eye-catching aesthetic.”
Chronic stress has a significant impact on overall health. According to the American Psychological Association, 77% of people experience stress that affects their physical health, and those stressors can contribute to other health concerns like high blood pressure, cardiovascular health, anxiety and depression, and more. In an effort to support members in their journey for more balance in their lives, ŌURA developed an effective, user-friendly way to measure stress and better understand its physical and mental impacts, both day-to-day and over time:
- Daytime Stress: Rolling out starting today for ŌURA members, Daytime Stress identifies stress triggers by continuously measuring small changes in biometrics like heart rate, HRV, and temperature. By capturing readings every 15 minutes, members can see which experiences add stress to their day and which ones help them recover.
- Reflections: Now available in beta for iOS, Reflections is a new, AI-powered journal function in the Oura App. Journaling is an effective tool for reducing stress, and Reflections aims to make this practice even easier. By enabling members to speak and record a short journal entry and use a single gesture to record mood and mental state, the Oura App takes the effort out of journaling, tracking mood, and tagging. Speech recognition transcribes the text, while AI-powered auto-tagging automatically creates context for a member’s ŌURA data.
- Stress Resilience (rolling out this winter): Building on their foundational health and wellness metrics, Stress Resilience creates an assessment of members’ ability to withstand physiological stress by tracking daytime stress load, daytime recovery, and recovery during sleep. Coupled with Daytime Stress, Stress Resilience enables ŌURA members to balance between stress and recovery by providing insights, education, and recommendations to manage stress and improve overall health.
“Tackling stress as a foundational part of health is a natural evolution for us. We’ve spent countless hours researching, testing, and perfecting these features to capture daytime measurements that help paint the full picture of a person’s wellbeing,” said Holly Shelton, Chief Product Officer, ŌURA. “Being human is inherently stressful. We all experience stress and it’s often depicted as something we need to eliminate and avoid at all costs. When understood and managed well, stress can be your ally in boosting productivity, flexing your creativity, and building resilience. That’s the power we’re helping our members harness with our new stress offerings.”
To give members more tangible ways to effectively recover from day-to-day stressors and reduce the likelihood of chronic stress, ŌURA has partnered with both Headspace, the provider of the world’s most comprehensive digital mental health platform and Thrive Global, the leading enterprise behavior change technology company founded by Arianna Huffington. Timed with the launch of Stress Resilience, ŌURA members can access select stress-focused Headspace content including meditations, guided breathwork, and muscle relaxation exercises via the Explore section and Daytime Stress feature in the Oura App. Thrive will launch a series of sleep and stress management challenges on their platform, with the option for users to integrate sleep and stress data from ŌURA, to encourage the development of healthy, sustainable habits.
Additionally, the brand is adding a new colorway to its popular Horizon style, Brushed Titanium. Created with ŌURA members in mind, the striking, in-demand design adds an edge to the Oura Ring suite of colors:
- Bespoke design: Brushed Titanium has a matte surface, but is anything but dull. The vertical brushing technique creates a velvet-like look and feel that is understated and sophisticated.
- Visually dynamic finish: Brushed Titanium’s exterior reflects light differently from every angle as it moves, a quality that accentuates the inherent properties of its Chromium Nitride coating.
- Medical-grade durability: Brushed Titanium boasts the same medical-grade materials used in the surgical and aerospace industries. Its brushed PVD coating increases durability, making it more resistant to daily wear and tear, and accentuates its textured design.
