NIGHTOWL

Background: An important challenge in sleep medicine is the initial diagnosis of sleep disorders. It has been estimated that up to 90% of sleep apnoea patients remain undiagnosed and untreated. The clinical practice guideline for diagnostic testing for adult sleep apnea by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) formulated a strong recommendation that both polysomnography (PSG) and home sleep apnea testing (HSAT) are appropriate diagnostic testing options. For this purpose, the company Ectosense developed NightOwl: a minimally obtrusive system for the diagnosis of sleep apnea at home.

Study Goal: In this project, the NightOwl device is compared to the gold standard PSG to estimate the predictive performance of sleep apnea diagnosis. The NightOwl system consists of a small sensor device placed on the fingertip, a cloud-based analytics platform and software. The sensor acquires accelerometer and photoplethysmography data, which enables the detection of features such as blood oxygen saturation and activity.

Study design: To develop a mobile screening system consisting of a finger-worn pulse oximeter, accelerometer and microphone that achieves comparable diagnostic outcomes to that of the current gold standard full-night PSG, with respect to sleep apnea diagnosis.

 Keywords: sleep apnea – mobile detection – wearable device – automated screening system for sleep stages – photoplethysmography

Partners:

Hasselt university

Ziekenhuis Oost-Limburg

• Pneumology & Sleep Laboratory Department
• Future Health Department