A recent report provides a plan for an unbiased, non-intrusive, and effortless sleep monitoring system using smart thermostats with motion sensors. The study will be presented at the SLEEP 2024 annual meeting. The findings indicate that smart thermostats were able to categorize sleep quality into three distinct clusters, showing noticeable differences in sleep duration, disturbances, and efficiency. The comparative analysis highlighted the variability in sleep patterns.quality, emphasizing the potential of smart devices and NextGen IoT data sources in identifying sleep patterns and contributing to sleep research without invasive monitoring.
“Even though these smart thermostats were not originally intended for health monitoring, their ability to accurately distinguish between complex sleep patterns and disturbances were the most unexpected aspect of this study,” said Jasleen Kaur, who holds a Ph.D. in computer science and engineering and is a postdoctoral researcher at the UbiLab, University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.
The researchers analyzed eight terabytes of data collected from sSmart thermostats were installed in 178,706 households to track sensor activations and translate them into signals that could model sleep patterns. Machine learning models were then used to analyze the sleep quality indicators.
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine acknowledges that consumer sleep technology can improve the interaction between patients and clinicians when used alongside proper clinical evaluation. However, these tools are not meant to replace medical assessment.
Kaur emphasized the study’s findings, pointing out the potential for smart devices to gather significant long-term behavioral health data at home for almost real-time public health monitoring.
Health surveillance is an important aspect of public health.
Jasleen Kaur emphasized the importance of quality sleep for people’s overall health and well-being, but acknowledged the difficulty in collecting reliable data due to recall bias and subjective interpretation. Integrating environmental and behavioral health data has the potential to improve sleep health.
The research abstract was recently published in an online supplement of the journal Sleep and will be presented at SLEEP 2024 in Houston on June 4 and 5.
