Oura's App Upgrade Tracks Stress and Health Like Never Before

Wearable devices have come a long way from clunky pedometers. Today, they're sleek tools that quietly collect data while you sleep, work, or exercise. Oura, a Finnish company dominating the smart ring market, recently unveiled a redesigned app and new features that push health monitoring forward. With 5.5 million rings sold since 2015, including 3 million in 2025 alone, Oura's focus on long-term health trends sets it apart in a crowded field. Its latest updates, including a Cumulative Stress feature and a push for FDA clearance on blood pressure monitoring, signal a shift toward deeper, more meaningful health insights.

The smart ring market is booming, projected to hit 1.1 billion dollars by 2030. Unlike smartwatches, rings like Oura's sit snugly on your finger, capturing precise data from arteries with minimal fuss. This form factor, combined with advanced sensors, lets users track everything from sleep patterns to heart rate variability without the bulk of a wrist device. Oura's recent 900 million dollar funding round, boosting its valuation to 11 billion dollars, shows investors believe in this vision. But what makes these updates so compelling for users?

Oura's new Cumulative Stress feature rethinks how we understand stress. Instead of snapshot measurements, it analyzes a month's worth of data, updated weekly, to reveal how stress builds over time. By analyzing five key factors including sleep continuity, heart rate responses, small sleep movements, body temperature regulation, and activity patterns, it provides a clearer picture of your body's overall stress level. Jason Russell, Oura's VP of Consumer Software, explains that these signals, like how your heart recovers after stress or how your body regulates temperature at night, reveal chronic stress in ways momentary spikes can't.

This approach matters because chronic stress drives serious health issues, from heart disease to mental health challenges. Research backs this up: heart rate variability metrics, like SDNN and RMSSD, drop predictably under stress, making them reliable biomarkers. Unlike smartwatches, which often struggle with motion artifacts, Oura's ring sits close to arteries, offering cleaner data. For users, this means actionable insights, like noticing how poor sleep or intense workouts pile on stress, prompting small changes before problems escalate.

The redesigned Oura app feels like a personal health coach. Its three tabs, Today, Vitals, and My Health, deliver tailored insights. The Today tab highlights daily priorities, like whether you need more rest after a rough night. Vitals offers quick views of sleep, stress, and heart trends, while My Health digs into long-term patterns, including habits and routines that shape your well-being. For women, the app now tracks menstrual cycles over 12 months, up from just one, helping spot irregularities or plan with greater confidence.

This personalization tackles a common wearable gripe: too much data, not enough clarity. By curating insights, Oura makes health tracking less overwhelming. Athletes might use it to optimize recovery, while others could spot how late-night scrolling disrupts sleep. With over 80 percent of the smart ring market, Oura's focus on user-friendly design keeps it ahead of competitors like Samsung's Galaxy Ring, which leans heavily on Android integration and operates without a subscription fee.

Oura's pursuit of FDA clearance for blood pressure monitoring marks a bold step toward medical-grade wearables. Its Blood Pressure Profile study uses passive tracking to spot early signs of hypertension, a condition affecting one in three adults, often undetected until it's serious. Unlike traditional cuffs, Oura's ring could analyze arterial signals continuously, offering a less intrusive way to monitor trends. Apple's Apple Watch, which earned FDA clearance in September 2025 for similar hypertension detection on Series 9 and later models, shows this approach works. The feature tracks blood vessel responses over 30 days, notifying users if patterns suggest hypertension.

Oura's ring design gives it an edge here. Fingers, unlike wrists, sit closer to arteries, potentially improving accuracy. Chief Medical Officer Ricky Bloomfield notes this allows better signal capture. But FDA scrutiny is tight. Whoop faced a warning letter in July 2025 for its unapproved Blood Pressure Insights feature, showing the risks of rushing to market. Oura's cautious approach, studying signals without displaying exact readings yet, aims to meet rigorous standards while building user trust.

Comparing Oura and Apple reveals different paths to health monitoring. Apple's hypertension feature, launched in September 2025, uses the Watch's optical sensors to analyze blood vessel responses, requiring users to wear it 12 hours daily for a month. It's FDA-cleared, backed by data from 100,000 participants, and integrates seamlessly with iPhones, giving Apple an edge with its massive user base. But its wrist-based design can introduce noise from movement, and it's limited to users over 22 without prior hypertension diagnoses.

Oura's Cumulative Stress feature, meanwhile, focuses on holistic health, blending multiple signals for a broader view. Its ring form factor excels at sleep tracking, critical for stress insights, and its app's personalization makes data actionable. However, Oura's 5.99 dollar monthly subscription, generating 110 million dollars in 2024, contrasts with Apple's no-subscription model, potentially alienating budget-conscious users. Both show wearables are moving toward prevention, but Oura's ring offers a discreet, sleep-friendly alternative, while Apple leverages ecosystem power.

As wearables like Oura's collect intimate data such as heart rates, sleep patterns, and menstrual cycles, privacy concerns loom large. A 2025 breach exposed over 1 million healthcare IoT devices, showing the risks. Research found 73 percent of fitness apps share data with advertisers, often without clear consent. For women, menstrual tracking raises red flags post-Roe v. Wade, with fears that data could be subpoenaed. Oura uses AWS for storage, but vague privacy policies across the industry make users wary.

On the flip side, continuous monitoring can empower users. Cardiologists see value in early hypertension detection, and sleep specialists use wearable data for diagnoses. But healthcare providers remain skeptical of consumer-grade accuracy, and interoperability issues keep wearable data siloed from clinical systems. Oura's push for FDA clearance could bridge this gap, but users must weigh the benefits of insight against the risks of data exposure.

Oura's updates signal a future where wearables do more than track steps. They predict and prevent health issues. With the stress tracking market set to hit 5.29 billion dollars by 2035, demand is clear. Partnerships, like Oura's with Dexcom for glucose monitoring, hint at broader capabilities. But challenges remain: high costs (Oura rings start at 349 dollars), battery life limits, and regulatory hurdles could slow progress. Still, as AI improves predictions and interoperability grow, smart rings could redefine how we stay healthy, one subtle signal at a time.