170. How Discovery Links Better Sleep To Lower Health Costs

Sleep is quietly rewriting our health stories—and our medical bills. We sat down with Discovery’s head of technical marketing to unpack a striking trend: members are sleeping less and sleeping worse, and the fallout shows up everywhere from diabetes risk to casualty visits to a hefty R230 million paid out for sleep disorders in 2024. That data doesn’t just inform policy—it’s shaping a practical, member-first way to turn better nights into real rewards.

We explore how Discovery is weaving sleep into Personal Health Pathways, standing alongside exercise and healthcare actions as a core pillar of prevention. You’ll hear exactly how the new sleep score works and why it’s different: it blends your duration, quality, and regularity with clinical context to set targets that feel achievable and relevant. Whether you wear an Oura Ring or a Garmin, track with your Apple or Samsung watch, or simply log your night on your phone, the program meets you where you are. Activate sleep tracking with permission in the app, work toward a personalised weekly goal, and unlock rewards every Wednesday—without needing Vitality.

What surprised us most is the power of regularity. A steady bedtime window stabilises circadian rhythms that touch everything from mood and focus to glucose control. When timing, depth, and total hours move in sync, accidents drop, decisions improve, and long-run risks ease. We connect the dots between small, repeatable habits and big health outcomes, showing how better sleep can lower claims and raise quality of life at the same time.

If you’re curious about the science, the incentives, or simply how to start getting paid to protect your bedtime, this one’s for you. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs better sleep, and leave a review telling us your next step—more hours, deeper rest, or a steadier lights-out time?

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:12

Hello everybody, welcome to Know Your Money. I'm Bronwan Wayner.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

And I'm Craig Finch, and we are from Growth Financial Planning. We hope you enjoy our podcast.

Why Sleep Trends Alarm Discovery

SPEAKER_02 0:22

Hello, everybody. Elder from Discovery, who's head of technical marketing, is back in the studio today just to unpack a little bit more around sleep and Discovery Health Medical Schemes. So hello Craig. Hello, Eldo. Thank you for being here.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Oh, thanks for having me from Randy.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

Appreciate it. Do you want to maybe just unpack a little bit more about sleep and around the medical aids? What's important about it and the reasonings?

Poor Sleep And Health Costs

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Yes, yeah, of course. So sleep is quite an exciting topic and it's actually very topical at the moment in the healthcare industry. When we started unpacking it on our side at Discovery, we noticed that there's actually been a deterioration in the quality of sleep of our members. Just in terms of the quality of sleep that they have, but also in terms of duration, for example, there's been a deterioration in terms of how well they're sleeping as well. And how do you know that? Just based on like members that's been sharing their sleep data with us over time, but it's also not just a unique discovery trend. It's also like justified and supported by other published research as well that we've picked up. And also based on our claims, in terms of like seeing how many members are claiming more for sleep type of disorders, that trend increasing over time. I think in 2024 we paid about 230 million Rand or so just for sleep disorders, for example. So it's like quite an astronomical amount that's directly attributable to sleep. And one may ask why does the medical scheme actually like care about something like that? Because it's like such a like almost like niche benefit. But what's quite interesting is that our data scientists and actuaries have unpacked our sleep data internally to almost like see like what else does it result into when you have poor sleep. And if you think about like something like diabetes, like you would think like that's completely unrelated to almost like your sleep pattern. But what we saw in our data and also like what's published like just like internationally as well, is that there's an increase in your likelihood of developing a condition like diabetes, for example, if you have like poor sleep duration, for example.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Incredible.

From Data To Action At Discovery

How The Sleep Score Works

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Um so that's the one bit, but also if you think like just like casualty visits as well. Um if you sleep little, there's an increased likelihood of you going into casualty as well. And that also results in more healthcare costs. So there's actually a clear objective for a medical scheme to care about their members. So while while there's a casualty if you don't sleep, what was that? I mean, if you think about like making like more accidents, for example, like on the road, if you have like good sleep. Things like that, yes, yeah. Yeah, so we've started unpacking like sleep to a large extent at Discovery to understand like how can we actually address and improve this. Um, and as I alluded to in the previous or in a previous podcast, that we have personal health pathways where we've always like tried to encourage members to do more exercise through our exercise personal health pathways to engage in their health through healthcare actions. But then also now, like let's also encourage them to sleep better through our personal health pathway program. So it's almost adding a new layer to our personal health pathway program in 2026 by incorporating sleep to it. So, similar to how the exercise personal health pathway works today, we have a sleep personal health pathway. So we're able to calculate a sleep score for a member internally, and what makes our sleep score quite significant and like amazing in comparison to the other sleep scores in the industry is that we also understand your clinical health data in the background as well. For example, like understanding like what chronic conditions you have, what you're claiming for, like your age, your gender, your family composition, and things like that. So there's a lot of factors that we can take into account when we calculate a personal health. There's a lot of factors that we can take into account when we calculate someone's sleep score. It's a more personalized score.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

And how do you how do you calculate the sleep?

Devices, Apps, And Self Reporting

Regularity And The Algorithm

Rewards Without Vitality

SPEAKER_00 4:22

So that's a good question. So we take three key things. So we had our health RD and our clinical teams work together to come up with almost like the optimal way to create the sleep score. And there's three very important determinants of sleep. Um, one being your duration, obviously. Um, so it should be between like seven to nine hours more or less. Um, just important to flag it is personalized in terms of like what we say is like important for you as an individual. So get your personal one on your personal health pathway. Yes. Yeah. So the first point is your duration in terms of like how long you're sleeping, then also the quality of your sleep. So with wearable devices, we're actually able to track in terms of like how deep, how much deep sleep you have in a specific evening. So you say wearable devices, what is that? So that would be your um aura ring. Um, so that's a new type of innovation. Um, that's the one. But you can also use your um watch, for example, your Apple, your Samsung, or your Common Watch to sleep with as well. And it's also phone enabled. You can also track your phone. So we sent like a survey for you to complete to just like assess like how well did you sleep, um, to make sure that everyone can also participate in it. So that's almost like the second layer. So you can choose like between a ring, a watch, or self-reporting on your cell phone, which one um is your choice, just in terms of like what your quality of sleep was. Okay. Um, so it's duration, quality, and then the last one is your regularity, which I never knew was important actually, but it's almost saying that you should go to bed within an hour of a usual bedtime. So, for example, like I like to go to bed at 10. So for me, it should almost like be in the window of 10 o'clock, um, to almost say that this was like a regular um type of like sleep time for me. So it's those three metrics, and then we basically like bundle the insights and the data that we had. We had our data scientists create an algorithm for us, just like almost like compact that like into your single sleep score. And similar to how you have like an exercise score that you're working to to close your ring at Discovery, you have a sleep score ring that you can work towards as well. Does that attract points or that's so that's a vitality separate issue? No, so that's actually an important point. So this sleep benefit forms part of personal health pathways. Okay, so you get it. And it's available to everyone on Discovery Health Media.

SPEAKER_02 6:43

So you don't have to have vitality.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

So you can get money for it and you can get the opportunity to play the board and get miles.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

Like you can definitely get the game board play. So similar to, for example, like how exercise works today, you can also like get that similar type of reward on sleep. So you have like that like weekly sleep score, and if you achieve your personalized sleep goal, then you'll unlock your reward for that week.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

And that that always comes through on your app? Yes, yes. On the Wednesday. On the Wednesday, yeah, yeah.

Activating Sleep Tracking

SPEAKER_02 7:13

My kids push the button every single time.

SPEAKER_01 7:17

They'll be able to push it more often soon.

SPEAKER_02 7:20

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

Okay, but you have to enable sleep somehow, is that right?

Wrap Up And Listener Info

SPEAKER_00 7:24

Yes, yeah, yeah. So enable sleep tracking on the app, yes, yeah, yeah. So it's not automatically done. No, no, we need permission of the members. Really? Um, so they need to activate it on their side, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:35

Okay, so Brahman's point is that you can have sleep and you can get rewarded for it on the game board without being a vitality member. Correct, yes. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 7:45

So any other points on that? Or I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 7:47

I think that sums up the sleep. Yeah, I think that's everything for sleep, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:51

Very exciting for the thank you so much for being here and for all your insights.

SPEAKER_01 7:57

Perfect. Thanks for having me here. Brilliant. Thank you for listening. If you have enjoyed this podcast, would like to subscribe, please visit our website www.growthfp.co.za. The information we have provided in this podcast is our personal opinion. For more detailed information, please discuss your financial association with a financial planner.