Ex-Apple health leader Ricky Bloomfield joins smart ring maker Oura

Ricky Bloomfield joined smart ring maker Oura —last valued at $5.2 billion — as its first chief medical officer, after nearly nine years shaping Apple's health tech initiatives.

Why it matters: The move comes amid speculation about an eventual Oura IPO and rumors that Apple has been working on its own smart ring.

Context: Before joining Oura, Bloomfield led work on Apple's health data sharing initiatives. He declined to comment on a potential public offering for Oura.

• The conversation with Bloomfield below has been edited and condensed.

Tell me why you're making this move. What does it signal about the future of wearable health tech?

• "We're at an inflection point for wearable technology where it's gone from a relatively niche product to a mainstream product where it's very common for patients to bring this data to their doctors."
• "I think it's important to take a bold stance on where [that] can go." Oura is "a perfect example of an area of a company where we can unlock those partnerships that might be harder at a larger company."

Do you see startups outpacing the giants in this space?

• "Oura is one of the most accessible wearables out there. When you're talking to an insurer or a hospital system, they want to make sure they can onboard products across their entire patient population."

What's a misconception about Oura you had before joining?

• "I started wearing the ring last year and I was actually surprised at the accuracy of the sleep tracking [and] the way that information was packaged and summarized as a score — it actually reflected how I felt."

You have background in internal medicine and pediatrics. How do you plan to shore up that experience at Oura?

• "In pediatrics we often say kids aren't just little adults. While the primary market for the ring right now isn't children, I would love to see that market expand."
• "I would love to see a ring that works for every age group, every demographic group. The pediatrics experience helps me see that there's nuance in all of these groups, and we need to make sure we meet them where they are."

If the IPO were to give Oura a major cash infusion, what's the biggest investment you'd like to see it make?

• "We need to be willing to work with insurers and with hospital systems and other technology companies in areas where we might not have primary expertise to close that loop."

What do you see as the next frontier for Oura — blood pressure, glucose?

• "Anything we can do to be a check-engine light for users would be an attractive area for us. For chronic diseases like diabetes or hypertension, the initial stages of those diseases are typically not very symptomatic. You don't actually know something's going on."
• "If there's a world where we can help you understand something might be going on so you can take early action, that's for me the promise of a company like this.

Do you see Oura expanding to hardware beyond a ring?

• "The ring still has a lot of legs. There's still potential we haven't yet unlocked in the ring form factor that can go in the direction of regulated features."

Example?

• "The temperature sensing in the Oura ring is so accurate. I think there are lots of other regulated features that could derive from these same signals. There's a long roadmap there."

How do you conceptualize Oura's partnership with Dexcom? How will that partnership look in the future?

• "When I saw the initial announcement, my first reaction was that it was a bold move. Getting into the metabolic space, I understand the value of understanding your daily glucose trends and helping with diet and exercise. The other signal it sent to me is that when you start getting into the metabolic space, that's the sort of tip of the iceberg."

What do you mean by that?

• "Glucose is one lab value. It's one measurement. There are many others out there that can also bring value if used in the right way. It's really about lowering the barrier to entry for folks to get information they need to improve their health."

Interoperability is a challenge in health care. Apple has HealthKit, the health records initiative you led. What is Oura's vision for integrating with the broader health data ecosystem?

• Because HealthKit "created an entire ecosystem of standards-based [health] data access that works across platforms, that lowers the barrier of entry for any company to integrate and help users get access to their data, ideally in a secure and private way, so they're in control. That's been a significant part of my career for the last decade, and I'm excited to see how we can take that further at Oura."

What kinds of health and data privacy protections will be key for Oura moving forward?

• "Making sure individuals are in control of their data and making sure that data isn't sold or rented. We need to put users in the driver's seat, keep data on device — that's preferred — or sometimes, with user consent, that data needs to be processed elsewhere."