Oura partners with the NBA to Help Players, Coaches, and Staff Understand their Health as the Season Resumes

Oura and the NBA have partnered to provide Oura Ring and health management services to players, team and league staff. We are united in prioritizing the health, safety and privacy of the players, coaches and staff.

Throughout the world, organizations and businesses are slowly working toward reopening and navigating the path to recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Among these organizations are professional sports leagues. In the U.S. and throughout Europe, several leagues are slowly resuming training, with necessarily extensive safety protocols implemented to ensure players and staff stay healthy and safe.

During this time, Oura, alongside two major research institutions has donated Oura Ring to thousands of frontline healthcare workers. Oura Ring have been used in TemPredict, a study at UCSF, and in a separate study at West Virginia University — contributing to a growing body of research on illness detection, symptom profiles, and recovery.

Oura and the NBA

With the NBA’s many high-profile players and personnel, accuracy regarding health information is business critical, and Oura responds to the timely need of bringing players and league staff peace of mind as they head to Orlando next month.

Oura Ring are optional for residents of the NBA’s restart campus and provide a supplementary data source for clinical teams. With Oura, the NBA and NBA Players Association are equipped to potentially learn more about who may be in a higher risk category. Oura is uniquely positioned to be an effective solution with:

  • Accurate sensors: Oura uses infrared light photoplethysmography (PPG), which reaches deeper than the green light LEDs found in most other wearables. Oura uses a ring form factor to measure from the arteries in your fingers rather than settling for the capillaries on the surface of your wrist.
  • Body temperature measurements: Oura is one of the only wearables that measures your temperature directly from your skin. Many wearables don’t track body temperature, and others only capture the temperature of your external environment, not your body.
  • Personalized insights: health monitoring relies on what is happening in your own body, not on population norms. Oura uses individualized baselines to determine when an individual’s patterns are deviating from their unique normal.
  • Ease of use: The Oura Ring is comfortable to wear, has a battery life of up to one week, and does not require users to input, manually upload, or measure anything to participate in HRM.
  • Validation: While Oura is not a medical device*, its capabilities stack up against advanced medical technologies.
    • Resting heart rate: 99.9% reliability compared to medical-grade electrocardiogram (ECG) and validated against the sleep lab golden standard – PSG. Read the study.
    • Heart rate variability: 98.4% reliability compared to medical-grade ECG. Read the study.

Oura: Optimizing Player Potential

“There are compelling research studies showing how Oura can support discoveries in illness detection, symptom profiles and recovery . . . Partnering with the NBA is the next step in our collective mission to help safeguard public health.” — Harpreet Rai, Oura CEO

Beyond supporting a safe return to the court, Oura helps players optimize their performance potential by delivering personalized Readiness, Activity, and Sleep insights automatically to their Oura App, just by wearing the Oura Ring throughout the day and night.

As the games begin, Oura helps players train and perform at their highest levels by providing them with a deeper dimension of personalized insights about their body.

And, when this season comes to an end, players will have a new edge: their Oura insights. As some players have already learned, Oura can play an essential role in ensuring they stay on top of their game, both on and off the court.

These same advantages are available to everyone that chooses Oura as their health wearable solution by purchasing the product on ouraring.com. 

Whether they’re navigating the restart of the season in Florida, training in the offseason, or preparing for the future, players will know how their body is doing, and be able to comfortably play the game they love, knowing that Oura is there to help them understand their health.

 

*Oura Ring is not a medical device, and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, monitor, or prevent medical conditions/illnesses. If you have concerns about your health, please consult with your doctor.