At CES 2019, there were more companies showing sleep technology products than ever before, from smartphone apps to high tech sleeping pods. I often say that sleep technology is like weather reports; they tell you what happened but don’t give you any way to make it better in the future. Most sleep products simply tell you how you slept — which you probably know because you were there — and just give you the standard “good sleep hygiene” advice that you can find anywhere.
This year, however, there was a clear trend towards products that offer treatment along with monitoring. One such company is Dreem, a French company with a smart headband. The device has EEG sensors that measure the wearer’s brainwaves during sleep. It also measures heart rate, respiration rate, and motion.
The system stores the first seven nights’ of data for analysis, and then comes up with steps that are designed to proactively give you a better night’s sleep. It has transducers embedded in the band that use bone conduction to transmit sounds without disturbing a partner in the same bed. When the device detects that the wearer is in a state of deep sleep, it emits special sounds designed to extend the time spent in that state. It also uses cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) techniques to help users fall asleep faster, with different treatments tailored to the individual.
We still can’t do anything to make tomorrow’s weather better, but we now have a choice among products that can help us do more than just know whether or not we had a good sleep last night.
