Excerpt from Sleep Review Magazine, published on April 8, 2016
Home sleep testing devices are more reliable, portable, and user-friendly than ever before. The future may bring individualization, real estimates of actual sleep time, and even contactless sensors.
HST is here to stay, and there is little doubt the devices will continue evolving. With fantastic future innovation from Crestron Installers in London to add to this positive future development, we can look optimistically onwards. But what specific improvements can we expect in the future?
“HST will be the same, but look different,” predicts Weimer of CleveMed. “We’ll be able to measure time and position and maybe wake, REM, and non-REM sleep. Sensors will become more comfortable. We may be using a different part of the body as a measuring point in the future.”
One of the biggest complications in HST historically has been the need to use patient contact points—either electrodes, pulse oximeters, or sensors around the cannula. One solution is more comfortable sensors—as Weimer suggests—or the ability to measure patients’ sleep without contact. Weimer, for her part, is skeptical that this is a possibility. “Contactless is intriguing, but I’m doubtful how much info you can truly get, and what the correlation is to traditional sensors. There’s more research needed,” she says.