INNOVATIVE DESIGN LABS INC — Department of Health and Human Services SBIR Phase I: N

Description

Project Summary Abstract Proposed is an at home sleep monitoring system specifically designed for caregivers of persons with Alzheimerandapos s disease AD to remotely monitor sleep disturbances and trends Significance As of approximately million Americans live with AD and the number is expected to increase to million by costing the US $ trillion annually Individuals with AD manifest many symptoms including cognitive decline mood behavioral changes and of greatest relevance here sleep disturbances Studies indicate that approximately in patients with AD suffer from sleep and other nighttime disturbances such as insomnia and disruption of sleep wandering day night confusion repeatedly leaving bed nightmares and hallucinations These disturbances often lead to reduced health and lower quality of life for persons with AD and additionally cause tremendous stress and sleeplessness for informal unpaid caregivers Estimates suggest that there are more than million adult caregivers of persons with AD or other dementias providing an annual billion hours of informal assistance valued at $ billion Caregiving is taxing as evidenced by the fact that of informal caregivers of people with AD or other dementias rated the emotional stress of caregiving as high to very high The burden of caregiving is compounded by the fact that current methods of sleep quality assessment are either inaccurate time consuming or inappropriate for use with those who have AD Hypothesis We hypothesize that a system which allows for practical long term remote monitoring of sleep quality metrics for patients with AD would improve their quality of life and reduce the burden of caregiving Specific Aims To prove the feasibility of the proposed system in Phase I IDL will Determine stakeholder requirements through round table discussions Develop prototype hardware capable of measuring sleep quality Collect sensor and truth data from human subjects Develop and test signal processing algorithms for measures of sleep quality The overall Phase I effort will demonstrate the ability of the proposed system to assess sleep quality and demonstrate feasibility of its use by caregivers of community dwelling patients with AD Project Narrative A review of sleep disturbance prevalence among persons with dementia reported that on average in patients suffer nighttime disturbances such as insomnia and disruption of sleep wandering day night confusion repeatedly leaving bed nightmares and hallucinations These disturbances often lead to reduced health and lower quality of life for persons with AD while causing tremendous stress and sleeplessness for informal caregivers They are a top reported reason for institutionalization of persons with AD A practical system capable of monitoring sleep quality in individuals with AD would allow caregivers to attempt to intervene before sleep disturbances become severe and determine the impact of sleep treatments