Turkish entrepreneur’s smart health ring finds buyers in US, UK, Germany

Turkish entrepreneur Ali Murat Arikusu and his team have developed a smart health ring powered by artificial intelligence (AI) which is being exported to the US, UK and Germany with an expected user base of between 50,000 and 100,000 by the end of the year.

Arikusu told Anadolu that his team began work in 2019 to develop high-tech consumer electronics and completed their proof of concept to submit to Türkiye’s Small and Medium Enterprises Development Organization (Kosgeb) to receive an entrepreneur grant to launch the project in 2020.

He said that when they first began considering their project in 2019, they anticipated that consumer products like cars, televisions and washing machines would eventually be connected to the internet and thus be operated remotely. At the time, however, there was a gap in Türkiye in this area, and many Turkish engineers wanted to work in this field.

"We initially started connecting consumer products to the internet, but then came the COVID-19 era, and the pandemic actually raised awareness. Back then, we realized that while we could clean our homes, cook our meals and order food from home, there was a significant gap in home health care. People with chronic illnesses and patients had to go to hospitals and health care institutions for certain health tests and analyses and be monitored from there. This led us to think, 'What can we do about this?’ Then we focused on the 70% of chronic diseases that are not contagious, such as obesity, blood sugar and hypertension," he said.

Arikusu said that he and his team first developed and produced smart kitchen scales that can analyze the nutritional values of food via an app, and later they developed a smart blood pressure monitor to eliminate hospital wait times and directly send the data to the e-Nabiz application, a comprehensive digital platform developed by the Turkish Ministry of Health that serves as a centralized electronic and personal health record system for citizens and health care professionals.

After the smart scale and the smart blood pressure monitor, Arikusu and his team thought it necessary to develop a product to measure health values continuously.

“Through our trials, we realized we needed a material that was waterproof and did not move -- that’s when we discovered this smart health ring,” he said.

“Then we started developing the software. We started working on the design. We began working on the ring at the end of 2023, and in December 2024, we developed a ring algorithm that measures sleep quality, correlates saturation and most importantly, stress levels, and provides data."

Arikusu said the smart ring can detect sleep apnea, oxygen levels, heart rate, heart rate anomalies, stress and more.

“Everyone’s different, so the ring needs to be worn at least for a week and analyze the wearer’s sleep for up to six nights,” he said.

“The smart ring will allow users to estimate health problems that are likely to occur in three to six months, ranging from hypertension to ‘hidden diabetes.’ This data can then be shared with doctors,” he added.

Arikusu noted that exports of the smart health ring started in December 2024.

“We started exporting this domestically produced smart ring to Germany, the US and the UK, and we currently have 3,500 users. We expect to reach between 50,000 and 100,000 users by the end of the year,” he said.

“Our operations in Germany and the UK are ongoing and we already sell it in Türkiye.”