SmartSleep - Data mining with multiple sensor data for detecting relationships between behavior and health
Constance, October 2014. Sleep disorders are widely distributed and often they are accompanied with chronic health problems like diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular and psychiatric diseases (like depression). For example, sleep apnea, a sleep disorder provoking frequent interrupts on breathing, impacts 4% of the male and 2% of the female population.
The majority of studies about sleep disorders are based on questionnaires capturing information about sleep, living habits, actigraphy, polysomnography or measurements taken in a laboratory. Modern developments like smart watches in mobile health care offer the possibility to capture behavior and sleep patterns during and over the day/night for a longer period and this will support a medical professional in their diagnosis. Telemedicine will support monitoring the treatment of sleep disorders over time.
The objective of the project SmartSleep is to analyze a huge source of biometric data, to detect patterns and to derive relationships between a person’s behavior and sleep disorders. In order to capture the data, mobile sensors connected 24 hours per day will be used. Besides the movement, these sensors will detect additional parameters as input to clinical long-term studies. One task is to provide mechanisms pre-processing the data stream before pushing it to the backbone servers. So, even the patient may receive feedback in real-time. A second task is to provide data analysis components beyond current state of the art systems. The goal is to close the gap in existing data-mining algorithms by extending them with scenarios relevant for sleep disorders. The overall project result will provide a remarkable advancement over a purely statistical relationship analysis within a population and it offers a perspective to achieve a system efficiently customizable to individual needs of a patient without strong intervention.
The project SmartSleep is funded by the International Lake Constance University (Internationale Bodenseehochschule, IBH) and it belongs to the branch of Strategic Research Projects of IBH. SmartSleep addresses core questions of health and social life and it incorporates crucial regional aspects. With the help of an international researcher team, the project will contribute to the development of a regional but transnational solution taking into account scenarios of demographic change.