By Harpreet Singh Rai, CEO 

At Oura, we have dedicated ourselves to providing consumers with the most accurate information about their health. Today as we unveil the new Oura Ring Generation 3, we are celebrating the culmination of three hard-working years of 24/7 development, half of which happened during a pandemic. A global team of world-class engineers and researchers worked with scientific rigor across Finland, Singapore, Asia, and the U.S, and drew insights from our very own Oura community. We all collaborated remotely to overcome obstacles and build our most impressive product yet. 

We are eager for you to meet our new Gen3, which marks the next chapter of our journey to arm our users with the most accurate data and insights to optimize their personal health. 

Good health starts with good sleep

When we launched in 2015, we started with sleep because it’s the foundation for our overall health and well-being. Unfortunately on any given night, half of us sleep less than six hours which has immediate, negative consequences on how we feel and perform the next day. In the long term, persistent sleep deprivation has been linked to serious chronic conditions such as heart disease, obesity, dementia, and diabetes. That’s why Oura chose to prioritize sleep before any other wearable on the market, and why we chose a ring form factor: the pulse signal from your finger yields the most accurate reading —much stronger than the wrist. 

At the onset of the pandemic, we doubled down on our commitment to safeguarding our users’ health. We recognized that our continuous temperature monitoring could aid in illness detection, and in March 2020 we were the first wearable to be deployed in critical COVID-19 research. Through the UCSF TemPredict study we donated rings to frontline healthcare workers who were likely to be affected by the COVID-19 virus. We also invited the Oura community to join the TemPredict study, which resulted in more than 65,000 Oura Ring users voluntarily sharing their data with the scientific community, contributing to a growing body of research on illness detection, symptom profiles, and recovery. We also launched our Health Risk Management (HRM) platform to help organizations optimize performance and monitor users’ wellness, and rolled out a Rest Mode feature to focus on recovery. 

Oura’s commitment to scientific research goes beyond sleep and illness detection, however. While we are investing in new use cases across sleep, recovery, activity, illness, mental health, we are particularly passionate about potential advancements and applications in women’s health.

Better digital technology to transform women’s health 

Around 40% of Oura users are women. Historically, digital health tech has not understood the needs of this deeply underserved community, and we want to rewrite that narrative. Given temperature is one of the clearest signals for spotting hormonal changes in the body, we see a clear opportunity to utilize Oura’s continuous temperature tracking technology to move women’s health-based research forward in a meaningful way. Most recently, Oura Ring was used in a study by researchers at the University of California San Diego and in innovative research in areas of women’s and reproductive health. We are committed to putting those findings into practice for our users, as well. 

Our community has engaged with us to share the patterns they’re seeing in their own data, and we’ve worked alongside them and top researchers to innovate and build our new Period Prediction feature, which we are thrilled to offer in the Oura Ring Generation 3. Oura accurately predicts your next period 30 days in advance and alerts you 6 days before it starts, so you’re always prepared. Instead of relying solely on the calendar method, Oura takes a more holistic approach to predicting your period as your body temperature naturally changes throughout your menstrual cycle. While most tracking methods assume your cycle is the same every month, Oura’s Period Prediction feature adapts its predictions as your cycle changes.

The Oura Ring Gen3 advancements in period prediction represent just the beginning of Oura’s long-term investment in the areas of women’s health, reproductive health, and family planning, and we’re excited to pursue continued innovation in this space. 

Your personalized daily health guide for a balanced life

Our steadfast commitment to scientific research has led us to today’s launch of the Oura Ring Generation 3, and along with Period Prediction, a host of other new features bring this mission to life. We’re proud to offer a substantial upgrade to the Oura Ring technology and capabilities, including 3x the number of sensors and 32x the memory in the same lightweight, sleek form factor, and all with the same long-lasting battery life.

The Oura Ring Generation 3 has a suite of hardware advancements, including 7 temperature sensors, as well as added green and red LEDs, alongside our infrared PPG system, to enable us to power more features, including: 

  • Daytime HR: The new Oura Ring Generation 3 features green LEDs that monitor your heart rate 24/7, helping you learn how your body responds to your daily habits and choices so you can balance your daily schedule to manage your wellness.
    • Live HR lets you see your heart rate in real-time to check in with yourself.
    • Restorative Time lets Oura recognize when your body and mind are relaxing, helping you know if you’re taking enough breaks throughout the day and getting the recovery your body needs. 
  • Improved Temperature Sensing: New in the Oura Ring Gen3, 7 research-grade temperature sensors read your temperature minute-by-minute, so you can look out for signs that indicate you might be getting sick —sometimes even before you notice symptoms.
  • Workout HR: Record your heart rate during runs, walks, and bike rides, and receive post-workout insights to see how your body responds to physical activity so you can better plan your training sessions and optimize your intensity. Receive a post-activity dashboard showing location, distance, and key heart rate stats, such as heart rate recovery. 
  • Blood Oxygen (SpO2) Sensing: The new Oura Ring Gen3 senses your blood oxygen levels while you sleep, giving you a more accurate read on the quality of your sleep. 
  • Improved Sleep Staging Algorithm: Oura’s new sleep staging algorithm was developed using advanced machine learning techniques and one of the largest sleep datasets collected to date, delivering enhanced sleep accuracy that closely approaches the gold standard sleep lab test. You can read more about our new Sleep Staging algorithm here. Currently rolling out in Beta.

Pushing boundaries on accuracy, content, and insight 

I think we all can agree that accuracy matters, especially when it comes to your health. As the only wearable that directly measures from the arteries in your finger for the most accurate reading, to our new and improved, state-of-the-art sleep staging algorithm, we are continuing to push the boundaries of innovation to deliver more accurate tech…all in less than 1cm of space. 

Yet we also understand that our users want actionable insights to inform how they put their data into practice. The average Oura user isn’t a biohacker and needs clear-cut guidance to improve their health. We believe content is the first step of taking action; people need to understand and learn, then receive guidance that informs their behavior. New for Gen3, people will be able to access right from their Oura app a library of 50+ science-backed videos and audio sessions that help them understand how to interpret their body’s signals. Produced alongside world-renowned experts and content partners, Oura’s ever-growing content library includes meditation, sleep, breathwork sessions, and more designed to help our users feel better, recover, learn, and perform. 

We are far beyond the days when wearables functioned solely to track an arbitrary daily number of steps. At Oura, we’ve always conceived of the potential of a wearable device to offer so much more. With the launch of the Oura Ring Generation 3, we are delivering a sleep lab on your finger, an illness monitoring device, a valuable tool for women’s health, and guided and educational content, among other industry-first features. To make this all possible, we paired Gen3 with a membership to fully invest in delivering the most accurate, informative health data and guidance, and to continue researching the most pressing challenges of our growing, diverse and global community.

Oura is introducing Oura Membership at $5.99/month (USD) for the Oura Ring Generation 3, which grants users full access to an ever-growing suite of features, daily insights, personalized recommendations, an expanding library of guided audio sessions, educational videos, and more – directly in the Oura App. All new Oura Ring members who purchase Gen3 will receive 6 free months of membership. If you choose to upgrade your Gen2 Ring to the new Gen3 Ring, you will be gifted a free lifetime Oura Membership. And, to thank our current Oura members for bringing us to this moment, if you choose to upgrade to the new Gen3 Ring by November 9th, 2021, you will be gifted a free Lifetime Oura Membership with an exclusive upgrade discount – this means that as long as you have the same, active Oura account, your Oura Membership will remain free. If you choose not to upgrade, you will continue to enjoy the many features and benefits of your current Oura Ring at no additional cost. For our current members who choose to upgrade and return their older ring, rest assured your returned products will be donated for use in further clinical research and will be kept out of the landfill. To make ring upgrades and exchanges seamless and hassle-free, Oura will be sending current members pre-paid shipping labels to return your current product at no cost to you.

We hope that Oura helps people move toward a more well-rounded, detailed, and macro picture of their health and wellness. We are so proud to finally introduce our latest game-changing health tech to the world. Gen3 is available for pre-order beginning October 26th and will ship this November. 

Thanks for your support in the quest for better health.