ŌURA has banded together with Eli Lilly’s direct-to-consumer (DTC) telehealth platform, LillyDirect, to marry behavioural and pharmaceutical approaches to obesity treatment – marking a further shift away from drug-only methods towards the implementation of a wider obesity care ecosystem.
Through this collaboration, the two healthcare players hope to boost access to a combination drug-wearable treatment approach, meaning LillyDirect users will now be able to receive a free sizing kit for the Finnish company’s flagship product, the Oura Ring.
LillyDirect and ŌURA pen this agreement as more than half of ŌURA’s user base consider themselves to be overweight or obese, with tens of thousands logging their use of obesity therapies like glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RAs) in the company’s app.
According to ŌURA’s CMO, Ricky Bloomfield, the rising use of GLP-1RAs in clinical care presents an opportunity to positively influence outcomes. “By integrating daily habits with real-time biometric insights, we can offer a more connected and personalised approach to support lasting results – not just in weight on the scale, but in how people feel and function every day,” Bloomfield said.
ŌURA and LillyDirect’s partnership is not the former’s first foray into the obesity space, however, as the Finnish health technology company previously debuted GLP-1 Insights – a tool designed to support patients on GLP-1RAs by offering a holistic, data-grounded view of the progress they’ve made on treatment.
Building an obesity ecosystem
ŌURA and Lilly’s partnership comes as the obesity treatment paradigm experiences a fundamental shift, with therapeutic approaches increasingly merging behaviour-led methods guided by health technologies like wearables and digital apps with medications like GLP-1RAs.
From a pharma perspective, LillyDirect’s US SVP, Jannifer Mazur, notes that the conversation around obesity care is no longer just about what patients need at the point of prescription, as the focus now revolves around “daily moments that shape long-term success.”
Experts at the 2026 HLTH Europe conference in Amsterdam echoed Mazur’s sentiments, with Earim Chaudry, CMO of online weight-loss clinic Voy, noting that medications are “the start, not the destination”.
As the evolution of the obesity space plays out in real-time, Lilly is seeking out ways to build a wider treatment ecosystem around the patient, rather than offering solely pharmaceutical interventions. This has seen the company team up with the UK government to enhance access to digital platforms and local community-based access to obesity support within Britain.
The merging of consumer and regulated health
Outside of the obesity realm, consumer health companies like ŌURA are increasingly joining forces with life science companies to integrate their offerings.
One example is the Finnish health technology company’s collaboration with diabetes giant, Dexcom, which integrated its over-the-counter (OTC) continuous glucose monitor (CGM), Stelo, into ŌURA’s offering – allowing non-diabetic users the option to track their blood glucose.
In a previous conversation with Pharmaceutical Technology’s sister publication, Medical Device Network, GlobalData medical analyst, Elia Garcia, noted that preventive medicine is garnering more attention now than corrective approaches – meaning that non-diabetic consumers could also use such tools to delay or prevent its onset through early lifestyle interventions.
