< + > What Sleep Sensing can Tell Physicians about Mental Health

The following is a guest article by Dr. Jae-Eun Lee, Founder and CEO at bitsensing

Analyzing sleep patterns offers valuable insights into many processes in the body and can help physicians understand not only sleep problems but also conditions such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma. Sleep sensing technology also holds enormous potential to help patients deal with mental health issues. Research has shown that being able to monitor sleep stages and people’s ease (or otherwise) in falling asleep can offer valuable insights into mental health conditions, from depression and anxiety to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), helping patients manage their conditions.

A recent study has shown that data from sleep sensors can be valuable in helping people with mental health issues manage their own symptoms. Data from sleep sensors can highlight issues and help patients to be more aware of their symptoms, in turn helping them to manage their conditions. Another paper highlighted how sleep sensors can help to monitor conditions such as depression and anxiety, offering warnings of relapse through the effects on sleep, and helping patients to achieve better clinical outcomes. The researchers warn, however, that smartphone and wearable sleep sensors do not offer the quality of data required to manage such conditions effectively.

To provide the high-quality data needed to offer a real understanding of conditions such as depression, anxiety, and PTSD, physicians have in the past turned to polysomnography (PSG) tests, which are used to measure sleep issues such as insomnia. PSG tests are highly comprehensive and offer high-quality sleep data, measuring everything from eye movements to oxygen levels and heart rate. But the tests can be uncomfortable for patients, requiring large numbers of sensors to be stuck to the body, and can only be carried out in a sleep clinic, rather than patients’ homes. This means that when it comes to the long-term monitoring required to manage mental health conditions, PSG tests are not ideal, and a newer technological idea is poised to take center stage.

Why Radar Works

When it comes to monitoring patients with mental health conditions, radar offers a less cumbersome and intrusive way to get highly accurate sleep readings. Radar has several key advantages over other technologies when it comes to the discreet, regular sleep monitoring required to effectively deal with mental health conditions. Rather than having to travel to a sleep clinic, patients can use a small, discreet sensor to monitor their sleep nightly in a home setting (with physician supervision), offering useful alerts which can signal a relapse and help patients get treatment at the right time.

Radar can detect the tiny movements patients make at night, and the sensors are accurate and high-resolution enough to accurately monitor breathing, movement, and heart rate through the night. This offers an accurate snapshot of a patient’s sleep and their overall health, including mental health. A small sensor sits over the patient’s bed, and sensors have been ‘tuned’ with traditional PSG data and thousands of medical data points. The accuracy of sleep radar sensors approaches the levels of PSG tests, just delivered in a far less intrusive way, which makes it perfect for mental health monitoring.

Helping to Understand

The sleep monitoring offered by radar sensors is just the start. AI algorithms turn the tiny movements that people make during the night into a detailed and accurate exploration of their night’s sleep, which offers valuable insights for mental health professionals. The data offers in-depth information on everything from sleep latency (the amount of time it takes to fall asleep) to the amount of time patients spend in sleep stages such as REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, offering physicians valuable insights into their mental states.

For mental health monitoring, there are other key advantages to radar. There is no surveillance element to radar ‘watching’ a patient overnight, in contrast to sensors such as cameras and radar. Being able to identify sleep stage sequences in a non-intrusive way can alert medical professionals to mental issues and allow patients the freedom to manage their own symptoms at their own pace.

Sleep monitoring is an important and overlooked way to stay alert to symptoms in patients with mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder. By alerting patients to when symptoms return, patients can gain awareness of their conditions and get access to the right treatments earlier. Radar sensors have an important role to play in this, offering the accurate readings that smartphone sensors cannot, delivered to medical professionals via easy-to-understand dashboards and apps, and helping patients manage their conditions in the most effective way possible.

About Dr. Jae-Eun Lee

Dr. Jae-Eun Lee is the CEO at bitsensing, an innovative company specializing in advanced radar solutions. Prior to founding bitsensing, Jae-Eun was a Senior Research Engineer at Mando Corporation. He holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Seoul National University and a Master’s degree in Electronic Engineering from POSTECH, underlining his deep expertise in the field.