This article is about THE BEST INVENTIONS OF 2020 - Home Health
1. The NBA Bubble Booster, Oura Ring
Buy Cool gadget for family: Oura Ring
This year, the NBA pulled off what few other sports leagues have been able to: a season without a single case of COVID-19 among players and staff inside its protective “bubble.” One of the tools it used to maintain good health? The Oura Ring ($299). When slipped onto a finger, the sensor-packed wearable tracks heart rate, activity level, sleep—even body temperature. Oura’s app uses that data to generate a “readiness” score—“a holistic picture of your health,” says CEO Harpreet Singh Rai. In 2020, the NBA and Oura partnered; more than 2,000 people across the entire league ordered rings from the company, according to Oura, whose investors include former greats Shaquille O’Neal and Manu Ginóbili. Oura has also partnered with the WNBA and NASCAR, as well as the Las Vegas Sands casino company, to better monitor the health of athletes and employees.
—Mandy Oaklander
2. Hands-Free Brushing, Willo
Buy Cool gadget for family: Willo
Created by a French dentist, Willo makes even the fanciest electric toothbrushes seem analog. Slip the nylon-bristle-lined silicon tray into your mouth, form a seal with your lips and turn it on. The $199 device—set for release in early 2021—pumps in water and specially formulated toothpaste, then pulls it from the tray through a tube into a sink. No rinsing required. The undulating bristles do the work of a team of toothbrushes, and the pumping action, which feels like a gum massage, is effective at removing plaque. Willo syncs with an app, so it knows how consistently you’re brushing. Missed a day? It’ll clean your pearly whites a little longer tomorrow.
—Marjorie Korn
3. The Germ Trapper, FEND by Sensory Cloud, Inc.
Buy Cool gadget for family: FEND by Sensory Cloud, Inc.
Every day, you inhale countless potentially infectious particles. If one gets past the mucus lining in your upper airway and enters the lungs, you could get sick. When you exhale respiratory particles, others are also put at risk. For more than a decade, Harvard aerosols expert David Edwards has been working on what he calls the nasal “equivalent to washing your hands” to reduce these risks. He thinks he’s found it in FEND ($60), a drug-free salt- and calcium-based nasal mist that strengthens the mucus lining, helping it trap and flush out tiny pathogens. In a preliminary study, people who used FEND exhaled about 75% fewer aerosol particles than those who didn’t, suggesting it could be a worthy addition to the disease- prevention arsenal, along with handwashing, masking and social distancing.
—Jamie Ducharme
