Inventive Neurophysiology Software, Outputting Measures of Nocturnal Instability Automatically in Anxiety, Insomnia & Depression

ended

A recent surge in consumer products to record sleep and provide feedback on its duration show that a large market exists for sleep improvement. Ensuring high quality sleep is at least as important to promote health as exercise, restricting caloric intake and quitting smoking and alcohol. Consumers are keen to utilize tools that help them attain these aims. Commercially available devices recording movement and physiology provide consumers with an estimate of SLEEP DURATION. However, novel findings from our ERC-AdG project, point out that SLEEP QUALITY matters more for health and well-being than duration. About one-third of the world population report insomnia complaints. In 10%, symptom severity and chronicity justifies a diagnosis of insomnia disorder. Early detection and quantification of poor sleep quality is essential to detect a need for sleep behavioral changes and to evaluate personalized intervention effectiveness. However, NONE OF THE CURRENTLY AVAILABLE CONSUMER SLEEP SYSTEMS INCLUDES A VALIDATED METHOD TO ASSESS SLEEP QUALITY. Our ERC-AdG project revealed readily detectable sleep features with a tremendous impact on health and well-being. These features are highly promising sleep quality biomarkers with unprecedented commercial potential to disrupt and innovate the current market of consumer sleep devices and applications. Combined with sleep training programs, THIS WILL ENABLE END USERS TO IMPROVE BOTH SLEEP QUANTITY AND QUALITY. This PoC project provides automated versions of sleep quality assessment algorithms validated in the host ERC-AdG project. Feature extraction and algorithms are co-developed with companies active in sleep measurement, ensuring implementation of the end product in novel commercial systems. We envision this project to be a double-edged sword: a valuable addition to the toolbox of the clinician treating insomnia, and providing the general public with the ability to measure and improve sleep quality through consumer electronics.