| | December 202019UTLOOKHealthcare Tech Sleep Medicine ­ Primed For DisruptionBy Lawrence Shulman, DO, Chief Medical Officer and Chief of the Division of Pulmonary and Sleep Medicine, ProHEALTH CareTechnological advances in sleep medicine lag in comparison to other medical disciplines, yet according to the American Sleep Apnea Association; 50 million Americans suffer from sleep disorders. In the last decade, very little has changed in diagnosing and treating sleep disorders. For example, the clunky continuous positive airway pressure (cPAP) machine remains the primary solution to treating patients with a disrupted airflow during sleep. While the machine offers patients a good night's sleep, the device hasn't changed in overall concept and design. In comparison to other areas of medicine, where technology is innovative and compact, the technology used in sleep medicine seems outdated. This makes the specialty primed for a technological revision to find new methods and mechanisms to improve diagnosis of sleep disorders and modernize therapies, especially in the treatment of obstructive and central sleep apnea. Additionally, sleep medicine needs new approaches to understand other sleep abnormalities such as insomnia and leg movement disorders.Diagnosis is stuck in the Dark AgesThere once was a time that sleep labs were scattered around the country and as ubiquitous as Starbucks. But those times are now in the past as both payers and patients have moved steadily toward home sleep studies. Sleep labs still have their place as more complex sleep disorders need additional monitoring and testing such as EEG, cardiac rhythm, and leg movement. When conducting a dialogistic study of sleep in a lab, patients are often attached, from their head to their feet, to many sensors and wires to monitor behavior. Patients have CXO INSIGHTSLawrence Shulman
< Page 9 | Page 11 >