Future Now
The IFTF Blog
How did you sleep last night?
As my colleagues know, that I am blogging at this hour of the morning is an indication that I have had a bad night's sleep. I am not alone. Approximately 29 percent of U.S. adults report sleeping less than seven hours per night (the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Sleep Foundation (NSF) recommend seven to nine hours) and as many as 70 million have chronic sleep and wakefulness disorders. According to a 2008 CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report article, "The importance of chronic sleep insufficiency is under-recognized as a public health problem, despite being associated with numerous physical and mental health problems, injury, loss of productivity, and mortality."
Epidemiological surveys suggest that average sleep duration has decreased in the U.S. during the past two decades. An article from the magazine of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, citing the NSF, points to more specific data to highlight this disturbing trend: In 2009, 64 percent of Americans experienced problems sleeping at least a few nights a week, compared with 51 percent in 2001.
Sleep tracking is a hot topic these days. At the Quantified Self Meetup in San Francisco the other night, it was the focus of three out of the six presentions; we learned about one individual's use of an infrared camera to record his sleep patterns, and saw demonstrations of two sleep monitoring devices that are among the first to hit this burgeoning market: Zeo and WakeMate.
Esther Dyson did a quick show and tell about Zeo, which bills itself as your "Personal Sleep Coach." From the myZeo website: "Developed with leading sleep scientists, Zeo is a new kind of educational tool and motivational program that helps you understand how you are sleeping, reveals habits and behaviors that may be helping or hindering your sleep, and teaches new ways that may help you get a better night's rest." Zeo has three primary components: a headband you wear while you sleep; a bedside display that captures data transmitted from the headband; and "sophisticated algorithms that enable precise and scientifically-validated sleep phase tracking." Zeo also offers data tracking tools on its website, as well as a proprietary, e-mail based personalized sleep coaching program.
Co-founders Greg Nemeth and Arun Gupta presented WakeMate, which uses a wristband with a built-in accelerometer to measure actigraphy, an established sleep study technique. Once synced to your smartphone alarm, it monitors your sleep and transmits data via Bluetooth to your phone, which then wakes you up at the ideal moment during your sleep cycle; this is supposed to leave you less groggy and as awake and alert as possible during the day. Your sleep data is uploaded to WakeMate's online analytics platform, where you can use it to track your sleep patterns and receive personalized feedback about how to get the most restful and efficient night's sleep possible.
Fitbit, a new monitoring device that is getting a lot of buzz these days, will track your steps taken, calories burned, as well as your sleep. Its sleep tracking feature seems less sophisticated than Zeo or WakeMate, but I have to confess that I don't have the full low-down on the device.
The most interesting sleep technology I have seen of late was developed by Dr. Philip Steven Low, who has multiple academic appointments and is the founder of NeuroVigil. Low presented at BIL:PIL a talk similar to the one he gave the day before at TEDMED. NeuroVigil uses a very simple adhesive, wireless sensor that monitor a single channel of electroencephalogram (EEG) brainwave activity and analyzes the data using an algorithm Low and colleagues developed called SPEARS. From the company website:
EEG data acquisition and interpretation is currently a cumbersome, time consuming, and error prone activity but serves as a cornerstone of testing in the multibillion dollar reimbursed sleep study market. NeuroVigil's technologic advance affords the company the opportunity to dramatically improve quality and lower costs of sleep testing, and of creating value in several other key markets including pharmaceutical testing and transportation safety, each of which represent additional billion dollar opportunities.
NeuroVigil appealed to me because if offers a very easy, unobtrusive user experience, while promising to gather a robust amount of data. I am curious to see how Low commercializes his important advances in neuroimaging technology. And I think sleep will be one of the most significant health challenges we will face in the coming decade. Now if I can only catch a few more winks before my alarm goes off. Sigh.