ResMed is, of course, a well-known name in the home medical equipment (HME) industry and among respiratory clinicians and providers. ResMed’s portfolio includes invasive and noninvasive ventilation systems, and CPAP masks and systems for patients with sleep apnea.
But in its Jan. 30 second-quarter fiscal year 2025 earnings call, ResMed (NYSE: RMD) discussed its collaboration with Apple and the Apple Vision Pro, a system that “seamlessly blends digital content with your physical space,” Apple said on its website. “So you can work, watch, relive memories, and connect in ways never before possible. The era of spatial computing is here.”
The Apple Vision Pro requires headgear, and Apple does supply headbands for that purpose. But now, Apple Vision Pro users have another headband choice.
Moving sleep therapy expertise into the communications world
“During the quarter, we announced another collaboration with the Apple Vision Pro team, with the launch of what we call the Kontor Head Strap,” ResMed Chairman/CEO Mick Farrell said in the Jan. 30 call. “This is a premium accessory for the Apple Vision Pro.
“ResMed is the world leader in providing facial interfaces in the field of sleep health and breathing health, and health-care technology at home. This is great to see that now a top consumer tech company like Apple has chosen to partner with ResMed on an interface that we make that delivers a superb balance of softness and support for the extended wear-time that users of the Apple Vision Pro need.”
Farrell pointed out that ResMed was well positioned to apply its many years as a respiratory leader to Apple Vision Pro users’ need for a wearable system that was comfortable for long periods.
“The Apple Vision Pro accessory is crafted with a blend of ResMed’s exclusive ultra-premium materials and designed to be gentle on the skin,” Farrell said. “This project shows that ResMed’s expertise is applicable outside a pure-play in medical technology, and it’s part of this convergence of med tech and consumer tech. And the learning that will provide for both the medical and consumer fields is an important part of this opportunity.”
Crossover with consumer electronics
While ResMed is a well-known exhibitor at HME industry events such as Medtrade, Farrell reported that ResMed “had a very strong presence at the Consumer Electronics Show or CES in Las Vegas just a couple of weeks ago.” PC Mag estimated that this year’s CES, Jan. 7-10 — the annual show is traditionally held in early January — attracted approximately 140,000 attendees.
As wellness monitoring — heart rate, number of steps taken in a day, calories burned, sleep quality — continues to grow in popularity, Farrell sees a great fit for ResMed. “[At CES] we provided a digital sleep lounge that offered people a place to go to relax and to learn about the importance of sleep health, of breathing health, and care delivered at home,” he said. “Across CES display booths, there were many consumer tech companies showing their latest and greatest sleep wellness and sleep monitoring solutions from Apple to Samsung to Google’s Fitbit, Oura Ring, Garmin, WHOOP, and beyond. We are very excited to have sleep health become mainstream.”
ResMed also could be seen in the “massive” Samsung booth, Farrell said: “Samsung was touting their new Galaxy Watch’s sleep apnea detection capability and illustrating the link between their Galaxy Watch ecosystem and ResMed’s market-leading products for the treatment of sleep apnea.”
And much more is yet to come.
“The velocity of change in the way the world operates in consumer tech and in health tech is amazing and ResMed is right in the nexus of that,” Farrell said. “In fact, we are driving adoption of basic ML [machine learning] and AI [artificial intelligence] broadly into our software offerings across the board. And we are pioneering generative AI with our commercially available product Dawn [ResMed’s generative AI-enabled sleep health concierge], which I see is just the start of what I call the sleep health concierge platform. More to come on that later. But the bottom line is consumers are more focused than ever on tracking their personal health, their personal wellness, and their personal well-being.”