Two health tech brands, Oura and Dexcom, are joining forces for one major metabolic health update. On Tuesday, Oura announced a first-of-its-kind integration with Stelo, Dexcom’s over-the-counter continuous glucose monitor (CGM), that will now display glucose data on the smart ring’s app for a wider illustration of how sleep, exercise, and diet play a role in glucose management.
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As our body’s main energy source, glucose impacts everything, including sleep, stress, and activity. The smart ring already displays this information on its app. However, thanks to the Stelo integration, users will see how these factors contribute to high, low, or maintained glucose levels and keep track of their levels in one place. Unlike sleep and activity on Oura, the Glucose feature won’t give users a score. Instead, the feature will tell them whether their glucose range is optimal, suboptimal, or poor.
“Our bodies all process food in different ways, which is why we’re leveraging a unique combination of ŌURA’s extensive biometric tracking, generative AI, and Stelo glucose data to address a critical need for more individualized and accessible metabolic health solutions,” Holly Shelton, Oura’s chief product officer, said in a press release.
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“By integrating nutrition information with activity, stress, and sleep, we’re empowering members with a deeper understanding of how their daily habits influence their wellbeing.”
Alongside the Stelo integration, Oura is releasing its AI-powered Meals feature, previously available exclusively through Oura Labs, to all members. Users can take photos of their food, and Meals identifies the nutrients and provides insights into how the food powers their energy or leads to a glucose spike. Within Meals is Nutrition Breakdown, which categorizes foods logged into the usual dietary suspects, like protein, fiber, carbs, and fats, while accounting for added sugar and processing level. Oura’s recently launched AI Advisor will help summarize the meal and provide additional insights.
Unlike other meal-tracking apps, Meals does not count calories. “We’re taking a different approach here, which is really thinking about how we can help people understand the architecture of their behaviors around food,” Maziar Brumand, Oura’s vice president of product, explained to ZDNET on a call.
The goal is to provide nonjudgmental dietary information to users to inform their meal choices, resulting in a sustainable and health-minded meal-tracker. The Meals feature will be available to all Oura users, including those without a Stelo CGM.
The Stelo integration and the Meals feature aim to connect the health dots aggregated by the wearables in one easy-to-use app. “By integrating nutrition information with activity, stress, and sleep, we’re empowering members with a deeper understanding of how their daily habits influence their wellbeing,” Shelton said in the press release.
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Oura’s action- and insight-driven approach to health tracking helps the company stand out from competitors in the fast-changing smart ring space. For example, many Reddit users have spoken at-length on the Oura Ring subreddit about how the smart ring’s sleep tracking features have helped them develop better bedtime habits, like avoiding alcohol before bed, because they can see on a graph and through a sleep score how their body responds to a late-night drink the morning after.
This actionable approach to behavior changes could spread to the Glucose features on the Oura Ring. People might see how their blood sugar spikes after logging a donut and could avoid eating that food for breakfast the next morning. Or they could see how an after-dinner walk takes their blood sugar down and add it to their nightly routine.
“Instead of avoiding specific foods based on one spike, we encourage members to observe patterns, experiment with habits, and discover what helps them maintain better glucose balance over time. With this approach, members can maintain a healthy relationship with food while building long-term habits that support metabolic health,” Shyamal Patel, senior vice president of science at Oura, said in a press release.
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Meals and Glucose will be available in the US on Android and iOS, and Oura members can purchase the Stelo (which includes two sensors that last for 15 days each) directly from Oura’s website for $99 starting Tuesday. The Stelo CGM is available for those who don’t use insulin and are over 18 years of age.
Source: Robotics - zdnet.com
