\Healthtech News/ America lost 138,833,045 hours of sleep on election night The average American lost 25 minutes of sleep on election night — meaning a collective139m hours of lost sleep. By Freya Pratty 6 November 2020 \Other Is IoT for pets about to take off? By Maija Palmer 14 January 2021 \Healthtech News/ America lost 138,833,045 hours of sleep on election night The average American lost 25 minutes of sleep on election night — meaning a collective139m hours of lost sleep. By Freya Pratty 6 November 2020 America is not sleeping well this week. The average American lost 25 minutes of sleep on election night — making a collective 139m hours — and heart rates were also racing, up 1.4bpm. The data comes from Finnish healthtech startup Oura Ring, which produces a ‘smart ring’ that tracks users’ sleep, temperature and heart rate — much like a Fitbit or Garmin but in a different form. To pull the data on how America’s sleeping, Oura looked for patterns in an anonymized dataset from tens of thousands of users across the US. Advertisement The weekend before the election marked the end of daylight saving, meaning Americans were given an extra hour of sleep. On Oura’s scale, sleep is measured with a score out of 100. Through October, the average was 78, this then went up to 80 after daylight saving began before dropping significantly on election night. The ring can offer insights into how key cultural moments affect a population’s mental health, Harpreet Rai Singh, the CEO of Oura says. “When you understand your sleep, you understand your physical health, mental health, and your life,” he says. “Taking a step back and looking at population level data allows us to explore new insights around cultural moments, to make discoveries we may not have seen before.” The findings are being shown on a screen in New York’s Times Square. “Right now the country is going through such an emotional and stressful time,” said Greg Hahn, cofounder of Mischief @ No Fixed Address, which partnered with Oura to bring the data to screens in the city. “No matter what side of the aisle people are on, we’re all sharing this anxiety. This is a moment to remember that we’re all human, and stress takes a toll on all of us.” Oura, founded in 2013, has risen in fame due to celebrities like Britain’s Prince Harry and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey wearing the ring to track their sleep. In June, US hotel company Las Vegas Sands bought 1,000 of the rings for employees, following studies that said the ring could potentially predict symptoms of coronavirus. The company has also partnered with Natural Cycles, the fertility tracking app, which uses the ring to track temperature, determining when someone is fertile based on the data. Oura’s now sold 250,000 rings and, in March this year, it raised a $28m Series B round, bringing its total funding to $47m. Oura has 150 employees, most of them based in Europe, and the team doubled in size in the last year. Freya Pratty covers news at Sifted. She has previously interned at Bloomberg and tweets from @FPratty Advertisement Help Sifted get bigger and better (and get a sneak peak at our future plans). Please take our reader survey. Take the survey Terms of Use Related Articles Is IoT for pets about to take off? By Maija Palmer Click here to read more Doctolib partners with French state for vaccine rollout By Freya Pratty Click here to read more The 10 biggest healthtech stories of 2020 By Mimi Billing Click here to read more The 10 biggest healthtech rounds of 2020 By Mimi Billing Click here to read more Get the best of Sifted in your inbox By entering your email you agree to Sifted’s Terms of Use Sign up to \Future Proof Sifted’s weekly \Corporate Innovation roundup email By entering your email you agree to Sifted’s Terms of Use Most Read 1 \Fintech Starling Bank wants to buy a lender 2 \Startup Life Chief of staff: the ‘must-have hire’ for startup CEOs? 3 \Fintech The 10 fastest fintechs to reach billion dollar valuations 4 \Venture Capital Rich Europeans need to invest 10% of their money into tech and stop buying stupid stuff like hotels 5 \Public and Academic European Commission makes its first equity investments into startups Join the conversation Subscribe Notify of new follow-up comments new replies to my comments