Over the years, Headspace has transformed from purely a meditation app to a platform that has become synonymous with empowering the value of mental health well-being.
Today at HLTH, the company announced that it will be partnering with Oura, the developer of the “smart ring” health and activity tracker, to further Headspace’s mission to revolutionize mental health wellness.
Oura’s smart ring provides a robust user experience— helping track sleep metrics, oxygen saturation, heart rate, and numerous other advanced functional metrics. Importantly, Oura announced today that it will be launching its “Daytime Stress” feature, which will help users identify specific stress triggers via constant monitoring of changes in heart rate and temperature by the ring. With more frequent capturing of this information, users can more closely find out what triggers their anxiety to help better manage and mitigate sources of stress.
This is where Headspace steps in. After being alerted to a high stress situation, Oura users will now be able to access stress-focused Headspace content such as guided meditations, breathing exercises, and muscle relaxation techniques. This will provide users with tactical measures to counteract stress and enable actual, tangible ways to overcome the specific trigger.
Russell Glass, CEO of Headspace, thoughtfully explains that Headspace’s mission is to provide every single person with access to comprehensive mental health wellness services. He also explains that the company is incredibly mindful about how it creates content for users: “Headspace’s approach to creating great content is to think really deeply about the user experience. We realize that great content leads to great engagement, and great engagement leads to great outcomes.” This vision to ultimately drive better mental health outcomes is the company’s primary goal, Glass says.
This technology and growing emphasis on mental health wellness is timely. The National Alliance on Mental Illness reports that in 2021 alone, nearly 23% of adults in the U.S. experienced a mental health illness; furthermore, only approximately 48% of adults with mental illnesses received treatment, and moreover, it was found that nearly 164 million people live in a designated Mental Health Professional Shortage Area—indicating significant barriers to accessing care.
Untreated mental health issues have numerous detrimental downstream impacts, often leading to worse overall healthcare outcomes (e.g., poorer sleep, higher risk for substance abuse, higher correlation with heart disease and diabetes, etc), lower productivity, and overall, generally lower quality of life measures.
This is the exact problem that Headspace is trying to solve—empowering users with real-time, actionable insights and methods by which they can better manage their mental health. The company announced last month that it would soon be partnering with Meta to launch its content on the Quest 3 virtual reality headset as yet another means by which patients can access the platform.
Overall, the world is slowly but surely shifting its focus to this important issue. Increasingly, especially amidst a burnout epidemic and higher rates of worker attrition, corporations are realizing that improving work culture and solving for employee well-being is a key factor in retaining top talent. Moreover, people are becoming increasingly cognizant of the value and importance of mental health—realizing that neglecting mental health needs often leads to significantly worse issues down the line.
As Glass thoughtfully explains, focusing on mental health wellness is one of the most important things that can be done to help improve the overall healthcare system and make an impact on healthcare outcomes. To do so, the healthcare industry will need to prioritize certain key levers: encourage people to seek care, make that care more accessible, and ultimately, raise awareness as to why this care is necessary. Fortunately, companies such as Headspace are already leading the charge on these efforts.
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