“How are you sleeping these days?” “How’d you sleep last night?” If anyone asked you those questions lately, you are not alone. Wearable health and medical technology advances and awareness both factor in a discernable increase in the interest in sleep quality and sleep health. Many baby boomers have chronic health problems that interfere with sleep, and all generations are seeing increased cases of obesity, diabetes, COPD, and sleep apnea. All of these drive the growing interest in sleep technology.
According to a recent report on the sleep sensor market published by Fact.MR, sleep-related issues and life-threatening sleep disorders combined with the awareness of new medical technology have attracted the attention of a wide-ranging business community. Both established tech leaders and startups increasingly look at med tech market opportunities. When they look, they see a growing need for high-tech diagnostic tools for sleep diseases.
According to Fact.MR, despite a significant new interest by tech companies, actigraphy sensors and PSG (polysomnography) devices will continue to dominate the sleep health tech market. Actigraphy sensors record sleep-wake movement. PSG analyzes sleep-related data to provide detailed reports. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine prefers PSG devices over actigraphy sensors for clinical practices, but together the two technologies hold both the lion’s and the lioness’s share of the sleep diagnostics market.
Fact.MR’s reports that actigraphy sensors and PSG devices will continue to dominate their market and therefore current “leading players” needn’t be concerned that new tech upstarts will invent something better. So a growing market plus continued market dominance project a rosy future, according to the report.
We won’t dwell on the point that discounting the potentially disruptive effects of tech development hasn’t served (former) market leaders well in the recent past decades. As Health Tech Insider editor Alfred Poor outlined in his post-CES 2019 Tech Trends presentation, there was a growing interest in sleep disorders at the annual Las Vegas exhibition. Perhaps even more telling was the presence of health tech companies that offer solutions to improve sleep, not just present reports that prove what people already knew. If you have problems sleeping, it won’t be a surprise when a doctor confirms it. Imagine the opportunity and market growth potential for companies with tech solutions that actually help people get a better sleep.
