Oura announced its quarterly earnings today and said it agreed to acquire Counsel Health for $625 million, after adding the company’s artificial intelligence chatbot to its app earlier this year. Counsel Health calls itself an “AI-native primary care company” and uses the app to provide AI-generated answers and insights based on users’ health data reported from their wearable devices that can then follow up with a conversation with one of its in-house physicians.
Oura says he expects the deal to close before the end of the year.
Oura CEO Tom Hale said in an interview with Bloomberg that the acquisition is part of a plan to connect wearable devices, clinical artificial intelligence and access to doctors based on insights from biometric data to answer questions or monitor current conditions. Counsel Health’s AI chatbot can connect Oura users with a real doctor directly from the app and leverage users’ biometric data from their wearable devices in its answers to medical questions. The plan they describe in the press release is to focus on three areas, including preventive care, acute care for episodic health problems, and specialized and chronic care for things like reproductive and cardiometabolic health.
According to Bloomberg, Counsel Health CEO Muthu Alagappan says he also plans to expand his network of on-demand doctors, which is currently “made up of about 50 people.” Counsel’s 70 employees will join Oura as part of the deal, and Alagappan will become Oura’s clinical director of AI. Oura says in its announcement that Counsel will also continue to offer its medical AI platform outside of Oura’s user base through new and existing business partners, including “health plans, health systems, consumer health organizations and employers.”
