Australian digital health smartphone app company ResApp Health is not a stranger to long -time readers of Health Tech Insider. In 2016, we covered ResApp’s eponymous smartphone app that captures and identifies the sounds of coughs. ResApp uses machine learning to diagnose bronchitis, croup, and upper respiratory infections. The app is approved for marketing in Europe and in Australia.
More recently, in early July 2022, ResApp announced FDA clearance of a new smartphone app: SleepCheckRx. This program identifies obstructive sleep apnea by listening to overnight breathing and snoring sounds. Physicians currently test sleep apnea in a sleep lab where attendants use sensors to monitor a patient’s heart, lungs, brain activity, breathing patterns, arm and leg movements, and blood oxygen saturation levels. When patients use SleepCheckRx, they place their smartphone with the app running on a table next to the bed at home. Sleeping at home without sensors stuck all over your body sounds like a much more comfortable night than in a lab. According to ResApp Heath, SleepCheckRx algorithms identified sleep apnea correctly in a clinical trial with 220 patients with 89.3% sensitivity (accuracy detecting when people have the disease) and 77.6% specificity (accuracy identifying people without sleep apnea).
ResApp Health will sell SleepCheckRx in the U.S. by prescription only. The app is available and cleared by the FDA to market for iPhones only at this point, but ResApp Health intends to seek FDA clearance for Android devices at a later date.
