From HLTH2023: 3 Companies that are Leading the Charge in Tech Meets Wellness
HLTH 2023, the most prominent global conference dedicated to health tech, held its largest-ever conference earlier this month in Las Vegas. The health tech industry is worth over $350 Billion, and the wellness industry is estimated to grow to over $7 trillion in 2024. It’s an area more venture firms are investing in. Three companies stood out in their approach to bridging both industries in new ways, as announced last week.
This Finnish company, also headquartered in the US, was founded ten years ago and is known for the Oura ring, which monitors heart rate variability, temperature, activity, and sleep. Many users find the data around how their sleep is affected by things like alcohol and caffeine insightful. A recent partnership with Natural Cycles positions Ōura as a wellness company with clinical implications (it has FDA de novo clearance for contraception).
“We just came out with a new feature called experiments, which gives you a protocol to follow,” Tom Hale, Ōura’s CEO, told me. “[specifically for caffeine] It gives you a readout after the end of 14 days and allows you to compare it to a population of people who are also on the same protocol.” It effectively brings data to the n=1 experiments many of us already do but for caffeine.
