Sleep management company Itamar Medical has just launched SleePath, a digital sleep apnea management tool that helps cardiologists monitor patients with atrial fibrillation. The platform allows doctors to check their patients’ sleep apnea management status and compliance with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) devices.
“Itamar Medical is committed to innovating technologies that allow effective sleep apnea management to be readily integrated into paradigms for protecting and improving cardiovascular health,” Gilad Glick, CEO of Itamar Medical, said in a statement. “Devices using our PAT technology and our Total Sleep Solutions service are rapidly becoming important tools for improving the care of patients living with or at risk for a variety of cardiovascular disorders. SleePath provides cardiologists and electrophysiologists with insights into CPAP adherence that enable them to work their patients to achieve optimal outcomes. Now physicians don’t need to lose sleep over their patients’ sleep apnea.”
Sleep apnea is a common condition in patients with atrial fibrillation. In fact, about 50 percent of patients with atrial fibrillation have sleep apnea, according to Itamar Medical.
The product includes a cardio sleep dashboard that lets doctors track multiple aspects of a patient’s sleep apnea status using data that comes from the Philips Respironics CPAP machines. It also lets clinicians see care pathway progress, diagnosis status and results, CPAP compliance, and the number of days and hours a patient spends on CPAP. Users can then see the data and how they are living up to their treatment goals.
Last year the Israeli company also received FDA clearance for its Watch-PAT series of clinical grade sleep trackers.
Sleep apnea has become a hot area of development for digital health companies. Sleep startup ResMed, for instance, got FDA clearance for its connected CPAP device the AirMini last year. The digitally-enabled device gives users contextual information-based coaching on how to improve their therapy through videos, emails, and encouragement along the way.
But the field has been expanding to include diagnostics as well as CPAPs. Last month ResApp Health, a digital health startup that specializes in diagnosing respiratory diseases, reported preliminary clinical trial results that showed its technology achieved an 86 percent sensitivity and 83 percent specificity for identifying patients with moderate to severe sleep apnea.
Some of the big names in wearables like Fitbit and Apple have also been joining the sleep apnea discussion. A study published in November showed that Cardiogram’s deep neural network technology DeepHeart was successful in detecting hypertension and sleep apnea when integrated with the Apple Watch. But this technology can also be used on Fitbits and Garmins, the researchers noted.
