Insurer Discovery is tapping the power of technology to help South Africans improve their sleep habits.
The company today announced an exclusive partnership with Finnish-based health technology company ŌURA to make the ŌURA Ring 4 available to its clients and announced plans to launch a proprietary Vitality Sleep Score along with world-first Vitality Sleep Rewards in 2026 – initiatives designed to guide and incentivise healthier sleep habits.
According to the insurer, this is the first time ŌURA Ring 4 will be available in South Africa.
The ŌURA Ring 4 uses smart sensing technology to provide continuous health data, helping users monitor sleep, recovery, and stress.
From mid-October, Discovery Vitality members with a qualifying Discovery Bank account can get select ŌURA Ring 4 models either fully-funded or at a discount of up to 25%, says the company.
“At ŌURA, we believe that health should be a daily practice. That’s why our partnership with Discovery Vitality is such a natural fit. Together, we’re bringing science-backed, personalised insights to millions of Discovery Vitality members across South Africa to take control of their sleep, recovery, and overall wellbeing,” says Tom Hale, CEO of ŌURA.
The announcement of Discovery Vitality’s partnership with ŌURA coincides with the release of new research by Discovery, titled “The Sleep Factor: A data-led blueprint for better health”.
The report reveals the profound physical and mental health benefits of sleep and sleep quality’s impact on accident risk for drivers. It also calls for the promotion of sleep health by healthcare professionals, employers and policy makers.
In an interview with ITWeb yesterday, Dinesh Govender, CEO of Discovery Vitality, said the company’s core mission is to improve people’s health, with the Vitality programme serving as the cornerstone of this approach.
“By making people healthier, you reduce your risk; and if you reduce the risk, the health insurance does better because there will be fewer health claims. The life insurance will also do better because there will be less deaths and claims from that,” he said.
“It’s the same as with our car insurance business where we reward our clients for driving better leading to less car insurance claims.”
Risks of poor sleep
Discovery notes that modern life – with its digital distractions, artificial light and demanding schedules – has made quality sleep hard to achieve. Yet, it says, sleep is as critical to achieving good health as are nutrition and exercise.
The insurer’s dataset – consisting of over 47 million sleep records, enriched with clinical and behavioural data – confirms the scale and impact of poor sleep on health and safety, it notes, adding that insights emanating from analysis of this data set have prompted a strategic shift across Discovery’s ecosystem.
Insights shared in “The Sleep Factor” include that people who don’t sleep enough or consistently face a 22% higher risk of death, and significantly increased risks of diabetes, heart disease and depression.
According to the report, poor sleep also contributes to employee workplace errors, and around 50% of the impact of sleep on accident risk while driving is due to chronic poor sleep.
Furthermore, one in two Vitality members have at least one sleep metric out of range (duration, regularity, and/or quality, including rapid eye movement and deep sleep), one in five having two or more metrics out of range.
From 2026, Discovery says it will be transforming sleep into a measurable – and incentivised – health behaviour with real-world impact.
Sleep will be integrated into the core offerings of Discovery Vitality, Discovery Health and Discovery Insure, positioning it alongside other key behavioural risk factors and lifestyle behaviours as a foundational pillar of health.
“I’m thrilled about the opportunity for our incentivised behaviour change programme to improve our members’ sleep and long-term health,” says Govender in a statement.
“With the evidence of sleep’s importance alongside exercise and nutrition, bringing it into the Vitality programme will allow our members to take greater control of their overall well-being. I’m equally excited about our partnership with ŌURA, which brings one of the most advanced wearable devices in the world to our members in South Africa. We share a commitment to using science and technology to help people live healthier lives.”
The company explains that members will be able to track their sleep using wearable devices or mobile phones to get a personalised Vitality Sleep Score – a proprietary personalised measure of the causal impact of sleep on a person’s health risk.
This score sums up complex data on sleep regularity, duration and quality measures, as well as demographic, clinical and lifestyle behaviour, into a simple score that guides each around their sleep health.
Govender adds: “Analysis of Discovery’s longitudinal dataset indicates that individuals who consistently achieve seven hours of sleep and maintain a bedtime within a one-hour window of their typical sleep onset are associated with more favorable health outcomes. This pattern underpins our 1–7 sleep heuristic.”
Personalised sleep goals
Ten years ago, Vitality Active Rewards was launched in South Africa and has since expanded globally, encouraging millions of members to maintain regular exercise routines. Building on this, Vitality is introducing Vitality Sleep Rewards, which incentivises members to improve sleep duration, consistency, and quality.
Each week, members receive personalised sleep goals based on their individual sleep patterns and health profiles.
By tracking their sleep nightly, a Vitality Sleep Score is calculated using clinically validated metrics to assess quality and provide guidance for improvement. Sleep scores accumulated throughout the week contribute towards meeting the weekly goal, similar to how Vitality Active Rewards tracks physical activity.
Members will earn Vitality Sleep Rewards by meeting their personalised weekly sleep goals – redeemable as Discovery Miles or partner rewards.
Sleep tracking will be available via Apple, Garmin or Samsung devices, or the new Oura Ring 4, or for those members who do not have a wearable device, via the mobile phone tracking – in-app Vitality Sleep Tracker.
“We now know that sleep is a health imperative,” says Govender. “We have long rewarded physical activity and healthy eating. Now, with the upcoming launch of Vitality Sleep Rewards, we will be empowering our Vitality members to take control of their sleep health in the same way.”
From 2026, sleep will be embedded into Personal Health Pathways, Discovery Health’s advanced digital health platform for medical scheme members.
Dr Ron Whelan, CEO of Discovery Health, explains: “Through Personal Health Pathways, we’ve built a precise and personalised approach to healthcare.
“Integrating sleep into this framework is a natural next step in helping our members achieve better health outcomes. We are the first health insurer globally to have sleep actions and rewards for members, and we’re incredibly proud of delivering on our core purpose in this way.”
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