The vast majority of systems are siloed, but some companies are working to connect care for sleep apnea management.
Excerpt from Sleep Review Magazine published on December 4, 2019
The US health care system is fragmented, and the subspecialty of sleep medicine is no exception. Doctors, businesses, payers, and patients grapple with disjointed information pathways between and among one another. As the market grows, the need for interoperability—allowing for seamlessly connected devices and easier sharing of critical data among various stakeholders—grows as well. Though challenges are numerous, some companies are working on connecting care for CPAP users.
The growing popularity of home sleep testing (HST) is one factor in the increasing importance of interoperability, says Hani Kayyali, CEO of home sleep testing company CleveMed. Insurance companies agreeing to accept HST is driving “quite a bit of volume” in sleep medicine, he says. “The resources are tied up with the demand,” Kayyali says. “Sometimes the resources aren’t available to really dedicate to create these interoperability kinds of functions.”
Looking to the future, companies expect artificial intelligence to bring new possibilities for synthesizing information, says CleveMed’s Kayyali. “If there’s a good way for the data formats to be interconnected or to be somewhat following the same standard, then scientists can apply the artificial intelligence to a larger pool of data,” he says.