35: A 3-gram Sensor To Detect Sleep Apnoea With Laurent From Sunrise

15 Minutes With The Doctor: Learn from Healthcare Entrepreneurs and Innovators

Our guest today, Laurent Martinot, explains how Sunrise was founded to reduce the challenges associated with diagnosing sleep apnoea.. Inspired by their father, a physician with a special interest in sleep medicine, Laurent and his brother Pierre leveraged AI and other technologies to create a simple at-home test that generates a detailed clinical report without the need for expensive and onerous overnight observation. Topics Covered: Why Laurent and Pierre decided to focus on sleep apnoea: Up to 1 billion people worldwide are affected worldwide. 80% of sufferers go undiagnosed. AI and other tools were ripe for application. “I think many people complain about fatigue and there’s a very good chance that they are suffering from a silent disease that is hard to identify without clinical testing.” How the Sunrise process works: Patient completes a basic sleep questionnaire. Sensor is placed on the chin. Push start and let the sensor run for the night. The next morning a report is generated and available for diagnosis. “Making things as easy as possible was at the center of what we tried to develop.” Barriers that make patients resistant to sleep apnoea testing in a clinical setting: Fear of the hospital environment and overnight stay. Discomfort with all the sensors and equipment. Development challenges: Software’s evolution. Making the interface accessible even to those who aren’t digital natives. Scalability. “It looks simple from the outside, but inside there is a lot of science.” How sensor and AI combine to analyse sleep: Based on micro mandibular (jaw) movements. The number of micro-awakenings and breathing effort. The stages of sleep. The exact sleeping time. Pricing: Sunrise is a certified medical device. Reduces cost and inconvenience of clinical study. Device reusability. “We remain very busy validating the instruments in different environments.” Website:https://uk.sunrise-sleep.com/ Once Daily Article: https://oncedaily.co/an-at-home-sleep-apnoea-diagnostic-device/