The Worlds Most Advanced Standalone Sleep Tracking App — Interview with CEO

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Quantified Self and Life Logging Dublin

4 min readJun 14, 2018

SleepScore, the sleep tracking company behind the device SleepScore Max has just released a standalone app delivering their SleepScore to the iPhone app store.

The app, free to use from the iPhone app store, is powered by sonar and is backed with massive experience in sleep tracking, backed by Dublin based sleep tracking company ResMed.

The SleepScore already has the most accurate sleep tracking device. Now they have most advanced and accurate Sleep Tracking app.

At Quantified Self Dublin, we got to speak with Colin Lawlor (CEO) and “Sleep Czar” Roy Raymann (VP SleepScore) on the launch of the new SleepScore app.

Sleep is a Big Problem

Sleep problems are notoriously hard to diagnose and resolve — they often go unresolved for years, causing health and general wellness problems for people.

Poor sleep costs the economy hugely — through direct health issues, productivity issues and general wellness. And then there’s the cost of sleep influenced accidents.

What is the SleepScore?

If you’ve used most sleep tracking devices recently, you’ll probably realise they are not so convenient to use. Sure, seeing REM, and deep sleep phases are interesting — but does it give a useful measure of how you slept. Or give personalised recommendations to improve your sleep?

SleepScore wants to bring the convenience of a single number to sleep. That sleep score is composed of many different aspects important for quality sleep.

Colin gave the analogy of weighing yourself — you know exactly where you stand with a single number. And you know where you need to get. Once we have that, we can work to improve it.

Seep is All They Do

There are very few dedicated sleep tracking companies out there — fitness trackers can’t specialise in something as complex as sleep tracking.

ResMed started out monitoring for sleep disorders like sleep apnea, and have gone onto produce consumer devices — the latest being the S+ device. The company has spent the last twelve years specialising in sleep science — collecting and analysing data from over 6 million nights sleep.

Over the last few years, ResMed and SleepScore have acquired assets from the sleep tracker Zeo. Anyone in the Quantified Self community knows the Zeo sleep monitor — the number one sleep tracking device before they went out of business in 2013.

SleepScore have also acquired the technology behind sonar tracking from a company launched from Washington University.

How Does it Work?

The technology is entirely smartphone-based — no need for external devices (the SleepScore Max retails at 150 USD). The device measures sleep by ‘pinging’ the sleeper overnight with ultrasound, detecting movement and breathing patterns — a bit like bats using eco-location. Sleep has signature patterns with breathing and movement — which can be detected.

Once the device has this data on your sleep, it can use the algorithms ResMed have been perfecting over the last 12 years to calculate sleep quality and come up with the sleep score.

Along with the score come recommendations to improve sleep.

Concerns?

Is it safe? Will it keep me awake at night? What about privacy? Will my health insurer be able to see my sleep data?

Roy assured us that the sound waves are harmless — at 18KHz-20KHz. There are no known health implications at these frequencies in any health studies. There is no impact on sleep.

For privacy, the team fully appreciate the sensitive nature of sleep data. It won’t be possible for 3rd parties to read it. Any data used in sleep studies will be fully anonymised.

Conclusions

The SleepScore app goes way beyond not only the sophistication of any other sleep tracking app, but also sleep tracking devices on the market.

The science behind the app, being able to give real actionable advice to improve sleep, based on the massive legacy of sleep science at ResMed means the SleepScore is the most advanced and useful sleep tracking technology on the market — period.