Rising incomes and changing diets are reportedly causing sleep apnea in China, among other problems. Loud snoring is one symptom of sleep apnea – a disorder in which the throat periodically closes throughout the night that can lead to death if left untreated. It is reported that millions of Chinese with sleep apnea do not recognize that they have the disorder.
According to a survey released by Tung Wah Hospital, Hong Kong, sleep disorders were significantly associated with factors including somatic symptoms such as bone pain and arthralgia. At TechCrunch Shanghai 2015, two startups introduced their smart devices aiming to help people monitor their sleep and improve their quality of sleep.
The SleepPro X Smart bed helps you ease your back pain by moving the mattress. The smart bed can adjust the hardness of the bed in accordance with your body shape by using digital sensors to add air to different parts of the mattress. Accordingly, the bed changes the angle of bed or hardness of the cushion to reduce snoring and can also provide massage.
Meanwhile the embedded sensor can record the sleeping data such as user’s breath, heartbeat monitoring, depth and length of the sleep. It adopts the voice recognition system and the app works as a remote control.
The maker of the smart bed, Emaker CEO Chen Guang claims that the company has six patents including its voice control, Printed Circuit Board (PCB), massage function.
FraSen is a smart connected sleep mask that helps people with insomnia or sleep disorder through EEG sensors and can make direct sleep assessments. The sensors, speakers, and lights embedded in the eyepatch help people learn more about the actual quality of sleep and offer variety of ways to improve it by adopting the latest sleep science, software development, IoT hardware, and wearable design to improve rest.
Stimulating nodes embedded in the sleeping mask to gently and naturally help the users to get quality sleep. The device comes with a mobile app that helps you maintain your sleeping schedule based on the user’s location, vital statistics and a variety of environmental factors like temperature, weather, and humidity. Its machine learning AI helps users discover their sleeping pattern and visualize the sleep information to let the users know more about their sleeping quality.
“The neuroscience of sleep tells us good sleep is not about how long you slept. It’s about how deep you slept,” says FraSen CEO Lion Woo. According to him, the company will adopt a free-mium model for its service and sell the mask separately. The users will be able to pay tier-based or monthly subscribe to service to access sleep analytic services, virtual personalized sleep assistant, and other software as a service applications for sleep management.
Similar sleeping mask includes Neuro:on made by Intelclinic, a sleep monitoring mask that measure sleep waves, eye movement, muscle tension, heart rate, and blood saturation with professional accuracy. The app analyzes the signals sent from the mask in order to provide you with your personal sleep score as well as ways to increase it. The mask is will be released on the third quarter of 2015.
Another startup that helps you get quality sleep is Shenzhen-based startup Sleepace. Its product RestOn is a non-wearable smart device that measures sleep quality of its users when placed under the bed sheet. Sold at $149US on Indiegogo, RestOn’s campaign was 308% funded on this January. Finnish company Beddit also provides similar sleep monitor.
Image Credit: Emaker, FraSen, Neuro:on
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Eva Yoo
Eva Yoo is Shanghai-based tech writer. Reach her at evayoo@technode.com
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