The future of sleep disorder diagnosis
04-11-2012
Sleep disorders are one of those areas of sleeping that has perplexed medical experts for many years. While we know about the rudimentary aspects of sleep disorders, there are a wide range of issues that still cause doctors and scientists to stumble, even diagnosing them is difficult as most patients don’t exactly fall asleep in the doctor’s office. Slowly but surely though, humanity as a whole is mastering the many various elements of sleep disorders.
One area that has caused many people trouble over the years has been sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is a sleep disorder characterized by abnormal pauses in breathing or instances of abnormally low breathing, during sleep and it troubles thousands every night.
There is light at the end of the tunnel. Recently four New Zealand engineering students created a new tool to help diagnose obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). They made a belt, which is worn around the chest so that it can monitor breathing patterns during sleep, with sensors in the buckle, meaning that no uncomfortable wires or sensors are needed.
The belt monitors the person’s breathing patterns during sleep and then stores this information in using cloud based computing so that the doctor can access it via the internet the next day.
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