Smart ring maker and health tracking company Oura plans to acquire AI virtual primary care company and business partner Counsel Health for $625 million, the health tech companies announced Tuesday.
The all-cash deal is expected to close before the end of this year, pending customary closing conditions. Bringing Counsel’s platform and capabilities in-house will allow more Oura members to bring their biometric data into a virtual, in-app care encounter, the companies said in their announcement.
“Oura helps members understand their physiology and, with Counsel, they can take action on their health across a range of needs, from quick questions and prescriptions to lab results, chronic care, and referrals,” Tom Hale, CEO of Oura, said. “Together, we can create a new model of care that extends the current healthcare paradigm by delivering an experience that’s more immediate, personalized, and proactive. This is a massive step in our mission to empower people to live healthier, longer, by delivering on the promise of a 24-7 doctor in your pocket.”
Counsel’s model uses text-based, records-informed medical AI encounters to help field and triage users, providing a path to telehealth encounters with the company’s in-house physicians, who are also supported on the backend by a proprietary “Clinician Cockpit” that surfaces relevant clinical data for the encounter. The two-year-old company boasts enterprise partnerships with health plans, provider organizations, employers and other consumer health organizations, for whom it says its approach can reduce costs and improve access to timely care.
Oura is a digital health giant with 5.7 million paid members, whose recently postponed IPO was targeting a $15.6 billion valuation. The company says it is profitable and “growing meaningfully” with 92% year-over-year revenue growth (nearly $1.8 billion) for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, but ultimately delayed the offering due to “uncertainty” in the market. Its most recent fiscal quarter, ended Sept. 30, included 153% year-over-year revenue growth an adjusted EBITDA of $87 million.
Oura has partnered with Counsel since June, and in September announced a tighter collaboration centered on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ ACCESS (Advancing Chronic Care with Effective Scalable Solutions) Model, set to begin early next year. The companies have said early data from their partnership show strong care satisfaction among those who saw a physician (4.6 out of 5 average rating), widespread agreement among Counsel members (90%) that use of their Oura data helped improve care, and general Oura member satisfaction (70%) with the onboarding to Counsel’s services.
“At Counsel, we’ve built medical AI around trust, safety and responsibility, keeping physicians in the loop for clinical decisions,” Muthu Alagappan, M.D., founder and CEO of Counsel, said in the announcement. “Oura’s data gives clinicians objective context, trended biometrics, and member engagement to deliver more informed care. From the start, our teams bonded over a joint vision, shared culture, and mission, further solidifying as we negotiated our deal over the past few months.”
Under a new owner, the company will continue to serve its existing enterprise partners while expanding to new customers and broadening its clinical capacity. For the latter, Oura and Counsel said they plan to bolster preventive care via continuous monitoring and proactive guidance; acute care via timely intervention for episodic health issues; and specialty and chronic care management in areas like reproductive health, cardiometabolic health and aging.
“Oura tells members what’s happening in their bodies, and Counsel helps them act on it,” summarized Oura Executive Chairman David Shuman. “This combination expands our addressable market and deepens the value we deliver to every member. This not only increases lifetime value, but Counsel’s enterprise partners also open the door to millions of people beyond our existing member base.”