Sleep Revolution

Revolution of sleep diagnostics and personalized health care based on digital diagnostics and therapeutics with health data integration

Summary: Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is associated with various negative health consequences including increased risk of heart disease, hypertension and daytime sleepiness causing road accidents. The economic burden of OSA is rising as almost 1 billion people worldwide are estimated to have OSA. The current diagnostic metric, however, relates poorly to these symptoms and comorbidities. It merely measures the frequency of breathing cessations without assessing OSA severity in any other physiologically relevant way. Furthermore, the clinical methods for analyzing PSG signals are outdated, expensive and laborious. Due to this, the majority of OSA patients remain without diagnosis or have an inaccurate diagnosis leading to sub-optimal treatment. Thus, it is evident that more personalized diagnostics are required including predictive and preventive health care and patient participation.

The SLEEP REVOLUTION aims to develop machine learning techniques to better estimate OSA severity and treatment needs to improve health outcomes and quality of life. These techniques are implemented to high-end wearables developed in this project to alleviate the costs and increase the availability of PSGs. Finally, we aim to design a digital platform that functions as a bridge between researchers, patients and healthcare professionals.

We will achieve these ambitious goals throughout extensive collaboration between sleep specialists, computer scientists and industry partners. The collaboration network consists of over 30 sleep centers working together to provide the needed retrospective data (over 10.000 sleep studies). The multi-center prospective trials involve experts and end-users to assess and validate the new SLEEP REVOLUTION diagnostic algorithms, wearables, and platforms. With the commitment of the European Sleep Research Society and Assembly of National Sleep Societies (over 8000 members), we have the unique possibility to create new standardized guidelines for sleep medicine in the EU.

Research period: 1.3.2021–28.2.2025

Funding: European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, Call: H2020-SC1-BHC-2018-2020 (Better Health and care, economic growth, and sustainable health systems), Topic: SC1-BHC-06-2020, Proposal number: 965417.