Azumio, a pioneer in mobile biofeedback technologies and personal health applications that specifically seek to influence user behavior through the development and use of innovative biofeedback technologies, has announced the launch of its new Sleep Time app for Android and updated app for iPhone, which help people lower chances of diabetes and other serious health threats due to a lack of sleep. Sleep Time is a pioneering mobile sleep app that helps users track, change and improve sleeping behaviors by sensing subtle movements while you are in bed, analyzing sleep cycles and tracking sleep interruption.
Azumio's mobile technology solutions enable smartphones and tablets to gain valuable, user-specific information through utilizing the existing sensors and hardware found within current and next generation smartphones. In the case of Sleep Time, sleep data gathered by the app provides insights about each user’s personal sleep patterns. Recently, the company acquired mobile health developer SkyHealth, significantly deepening the company's mobile developer resources.
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Sleep Time will trigger a smartphone’s alarm within a 30-minute window to wake a user when it senses the lightest sleep cycle leaving you feeling more refreshed. Sleep Time also saves sleep data and displays graphs and comparative statistics so that users can track night over night sleep patterns and trends and make changes to routines during the day to achieve overall better sleep.
“There’s a mass influx in sleep deprivation around the world with the increase of stress in jobs, growing families, and economic pressures,” notes Dr. Paul C. Zei, MD, PhD, and Clinical Associate Professor at Stanford. “Accurate and impactful sleep analysis effects all functions of the body including cardiovascular health. Applications for mobile devices that influence the health and wellness for potentially millions of consumers will hopefully begin a trend of preventative measures using the device we carry every day- the smartphone.”
How it Works
Sleep Time syncs to Azumio’s mobile health platform, and utilizes Android and iPhone accelerometers coupled with Azumio’s proprietary sleep-tracking algorithm to sense movements throughout the night. In the morning users will be able to access that night's graph of the sleep cycles and number of ‘wakes’ that occurred. Azumio’s technology monitors sleep phases that include the following:
- Awake
- Light Sleep
- Deep Sleep
- REM (Rapid Eye Movement).
The update for the iOS app, Sleep Time+, extends monitoring to provide weekly and monthly charts to track sleep efficiencies over time and offers new sleep-enhancing soundscapes to help users fall asleep.
Why Sleep Time can be Critical
According to a recent Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital study, with only three weeks of abnormal sleep the human body:
- Fails to produce enough insulin after a meal (required to absorb sugar from the bloodstream).
- Dramatically increases blood sugar levels – peaking high enough to be diagnosed as pre-diabetic.
- Gains an annual equivalent of 10-to-12 pounds over a year.
- Risk type 2 diabetes – the kind most likely to affect older individuals.
Sleep Time offers a user-friendly interface and the goal for the mobile app is to enable the average consumer to understand, quickly and easily, how to use their smartphone to improve their health. Sleep deprivation is among one of the most prevalent disorders which effects overall health in many ways including stress, mental health, cardiovascular health and preventative care - and most users (regardless of whether or not they are avid mobile users or not) have no clue about how critical sound sleep is for overall health.
The issues noted above are non-trivial. In addition to helping users understand their existing sleep patterns, Sleep Time will help users modify those patterns. The charts and data that are gathered can also serve as important information for users' doctors in determining medical problems, causes, and ultimately the right steps to take in solving medical issues. The growing pervasiveness of smartphones makes it a no-brainer for taking advantage of these mobile devices. It is unique in its way as the smartphone continues to work even when a user is not actively using it.
Edited by
Brooke Neuman
