Sleep is one of the most important factors impacting health, safety and quality of life. According to the CDC, 1 in 4 Americans experience sleep problems, chronic insomnia affects more than 10 percent of Americans, while 25 million suffer from obstructive sleep apnea.
IBM, together with the American Sleep Apnea Association (ASAA), is looking to tackle this problem with the newly unveiled, ResearchKit-based SleepHealth app for iPhone and Apple Watch and Watson Health Cloud-powered SleepHealth Mobile Study. As part of the initiative, the two parties will invite participants to complete various tasks and submit surveys to help identify connections between sleep habits and health outcomes.
Also, the SleepHealth study will explore the connections between sleep quality and daytime activities, alertness, productivity, general health and medical conditions. App users will have the opportunity to help shape the study by contributing ideas for research topics, survey questions, engagement activities and messaging. Data contributed by participants will be stored on the Watson Health Cloud, where researchers will conduct extensive analysis to uncover patterns and connections in the data.
“This study also marks the Association’s commitment to patient-led research and data-driven discovery,” Carl Stepnowsky, PhD, the principal investigator for the study, associate professor at University of California at San Diego and ASAA’s chief science officer, said in a statement. “With ResearchKit and Watson Health Cloud, this new app will help us build the world’s largest longitudinal study to collect data on both healthy and unhealthy sleepers that can be published as an open study and shared with other researchers.”
Beyond generating insights for research, the SleepHealth app also serves as a personalized tool that helps users better understand the link between their sleep habits and general well-being. Participants will receive tips on health and sleep through the app such as sticking to a regular sleep schedule by going to bed and getting up at the same time every day, even on weekends and days off.
The application works on both the iPhone and Apple Watch, using a number of the two devices’ built-in sensors to take the measurements throughout the day and night. For instance, the app’s features Personal Sleep Concierge and Nap Tracker were designed specifically with Apple Watch in mind to help instill good sleep habits. Also, SleepHealth will be the first ResearchKit app to leverage Apple’s new Night Shift feature that reduces light exposure before sleep.
The mobile study is designed to explore connections between sleep and health.After several years of data collection, the research team hopes to develop personalized and public health interventions for a variety of sleep-related health issues, for example helping athletes optimize training before a big event, mitigating fatigue in the workplace, or detecting early symptoms of Alzheimer’s and mental health disorders.
The SleepHealth app is available to anyone in the U.S. as a free download from the App Store, with global expansion coming in the near future. Study participants must be at least 18 years of age and understand English.
Finally, with this news – IBM also introduced Watson Health for ResearchKit, a new offering on Watson Health Cloud, which is available at no charge to qualified, non-profit health researchers.