OREANDA-NEWS. The American Sleep Apnea Association (ASAA) and IBM (NYSE:IBM) introduced the SleepHealth app designed for iPhone and Apple Watch and the patient-driven SleepHealth Mobile Study to help identify connections between sleep habits and health outcomes. The SleepHealth study uses the open source ResearchKit framework designed by Apple to enable participants to easily complete tasks and submit surveys right from the SleepHealth app. SleepHealth is the first ResearchKit study to run on the data-rich Watson Health Cloud.

Sleep is one of the most important factors impacting health, safety and quality of life. Yet 1 in 4 Americans experience sleep problems, which severely impact daily functioning, health and longevity. Chronic insomnia affects more than 10 percent of Americans, and 25 million suffer from obstructive sleep apnea, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Often undiagnosed, sleep apnea is characterized by disrupted sleep, loud snoring, and repeated pauses in breathing. Chronic sleep loss, whether from a medical condition or lifestyle, is associated with increased risk of heart disease, hypertension, obesity, cancer, depression, motor-vehicle crashes and reduced quality of life.

In concert with researchers, physicians and patient advocates in the US, 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.

“We’ve made life the laboratory for this study by crowd-sourcing data and input to achieve an unprecedented understanding of sleep in a non-invasive manner,” said Carl Stepnowsky, PhD, the principal investigator for the study, associate professor at University of California at San Diego and ASAA’s chief science officer. “This study also marks the Association’s commitment to patient-led research and data-driven discovery. 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.”

The back-end data solution is provided via Watson Health for ResearchKit, which runs on the secure, HIPAA-enabled Watson Health Cloud and enables researchers to combine data collected via the SleepHealth app with diverse data sources such as medical literature, treatment guidelines, claims data and clinical data. Researchers can also opt to apply Watson Analytics for deeper insights from the data.

“One of our goals at IBM Watson Health is to eliminate silos that hinder collaboration between researchers, patients and clinicians, and create opportunities for these communities to share and learn from one another,” said Kyu Rhee, M.D., chief health officer for Watson Health. “It is exciting to see Watson Health and our ecosystem of partners help advance our understanding of how an essential, yet often under-appreciated factor like sleep impacts so many health outcomes like heart disease and diabetes.”

In addition to generating insights for research, the app is also a personalized tool that is designed to help 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.

A New Research Model for Real-World Application

The SleepHealth app makes use of many Apple Watch sensors — such as the accelerometer, which detects movements, and the gyroscope, which determines orientation in space — to measure and record movements such as shifting positions during sleep. It also uses Apple Watch’s heart rate monitor to detect sleep. Some of the app’s features, such as the Personal Sleep Concierge and the Nap Tracker, were designed specifically with Apple Watch in mind to help instill good sleep habits. With iOS 9.3, SleepHealth will be the first ResearchKit app to leverage Apple’s new Night Shift feature that reduces light exposure before sleep.

“As someone who suffered for years with undiagnosed sleep apnea, I’m eager to see how this app contributes to our understanding of sleep health and its connection to serious health conditions,” said Adam Amdur, ASAA’s chief patient officer, co-investigator, and the father of a young child battling the condition. “SleepHealth is the first ResearchKit study developed by an all patient team of researchers and advocates, and we believe it has the potential to be the largest international sleep study ever. Our ultimate goal is to uncover patterns to advance good sleep practices, optimize health and predict who is at risk for sleep disorders or other medical conditions.”

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.

About the American Sleep Apnea Association

The American Sleep Apnea Association, founded in 1990, is a patient-led 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion of sleep health through research, advocacy and education. The ASAA engages patients in many ways including a national patient network called A.W.A.K.E. that provides free peer-to-peer support through local hospitals and dentist offices; an active website that provides education to 200,000 unique visitors a month; and through dynamic social media communities and discussion forums. Its CPAP Assistance Program (CAP) has provided over 4,000 medical equipment packages to sleep apnea patients over the last two years. Most recently, ASAA launched Sleeptember®, a new initiative to create fun and engaging online and community events in order to raise awareness of the public health impact of sleep loss, connections to comorbid health conditions, and raise funds for medical research. 

About IBM Watson Health

Watson is the first commercially available cognitive computing capability representing a new era in computing. The system, delivered through the cloud, analyzes high volumes of data, understands complex questions posed in natural language, and proposes evidence-based answers. Watson continuously learns, gaining in value and knowledge over time, from previous interactions. In April 2015, the company launched IBM Watson Health and the Watson Health Cloud platform. The new unit will help improve the ability of doctors, researchers and insurers to innovate by surfacing insights from the massive amount of personal health data being created and shared daily. The Watson Health Cloud will allow this information to be de-identified, shared and combined with a dynamic and constantly growing aggregated view of clinical, research and social health data.