Sleep disorders are disturbingly common. Approximately one-third of U.S. adults self-report insufficient sleep, according to the CDC. Sleep disorders often accompany heart disease, obesity, depression, Type 2 diabetes, and other chronic diseases and conditions, When a physician suspects a patient may have a sleep disorder, the standard test is polysomnography, aka a sleep study. Usually done at a sleep center or a hospital, a sleep study requires that you sleep during your normal sleeping time, so typically that means an overnight hooked up to sensors that monitor your brain waves, blood oxygen saturation, heart rate, respiration rate, and eye and leg movement. The entire process can be inconvenient at best for many patients, who would prefer to spend the night sleeping in their own bed.
London, England-based Acurable’s AcuPebble SA100 is an at-home sleep testing platform that promises to improve sleep studies and make them more convenient. The AcuPebble is a non-invasive wearable device that patients can use without an overnight stay in a hospital or sleep center. Patients use it by removing an adhesive cover and attaching the small hockey-puck shape device to their neck before they go to bed for the night. During the night, the AcuPebble’s acoustic sensor detects and records the sounds from the patient’s cardiac and pulmonary systems. It sends the data to an app running on an associated smartphone. The smartphone then transfers the data to the cloud, where algorithms analyze the data to detect issues such as obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), asthma, epilepsy, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and pneumonia. The platform generates a detailed sleep report and transmits the report to the patient’s medical professionals.
Acurable has both a CE mark to allow sales in Europe and FDA 150(k) clearance in the U.S., according to the company. Acurable reports two clinical tests for the AcuPebble SA100 in which the wearable device was more than 90% accurate compared with polysomnography software and at-home multi-channel polygraphy. After an initial release in the UK and Spain in 2021, Acurable recently obtained funding to expand its marketing to Europe and North America. We look forward to reading peer-reviewed studies with further measures of the platform’s accuracy.
