Connected and intelligent device for personalised diagnostic, treatment and management of sleep breathing disorders. SnooZeal-Connect

阻塞性睡眠呼吸暂停是指咽喉的肌肉和软组织充分放松和收缩，导致睡眠期间呼吸道完全堵塞10秒或更长时间的情况。在极端情况下，阻塞性睡眠呼吸暂停综合症是一种潜在的致命疾病，但对于中度阻塞性睡眠呼吸暂停综合症患者来说，经常被打扰的睡眠造成的疲劳会严重影响生活质量。如果不治疗，这种情况会增加高血压、冠心病、中风和糖尿病的风险。目前的治疗需要持续使用睡眠时佩戴的呼吸道阻塞预防装置。它们在根本原因上没有任何改善，因此需要在人的余生中夜间使用。在英国，阻塞性睡眠呼吸暂停综合症影响了大约150万人，尽管2017年睡眠呼吸暂停设备的市场规模为44亿美元，但仍然没有产品可以治疗这种疾病，在严重情况下，只有手术是最后的手段，不能保证成功。Snoozeal已经开发出一种设备，可以安装在舌头上，每天提供20分钟的治疗方案，通过温和的电脉冲或神经调节来改变舌头后部收缩肌肉的生理。增加舌音可以阻止它向后塌陷并堵塞呼吸道，提供长期的治疗。该项目将进一步将Snoozeal设备开发成一个互联的智能平台“SnooZal-Connect”，它将在治疗过程中从设备收集生物传感器信息。机器学习和基于人工智能的方法将对这些数据进行分类，以确定睡眠呼吸暂停的程度，并提供个性化的治疗方案。SnooZere-Connect将促进在家中进行低成本、便捷的干预，并缩小数百万患者的健康和福祉差距。它还将通过减少治疗严重睡眠呼吸暂停的直接成本以及治疗OSA对健康的长期影响的成本来减轻卫生服务的负担。

Obstructive Sleep Apnoea is a condition where the muscles and soft tissues in the throat relax and collapse sufficiently to cause a total blockage of the airway for 10 seconds or more during sleep. OSA is a potentially deadly condition in extreme cases but for moderate OSA patients, fatigue from regularly disturbed sleep can impact heavily on quality of life. If left untreated, the condition increases the risks of high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, stroke and diabetes. Current treatment requires the continual use of airway obstruction preventative devices worn whilst sleeping. They do not offer any improvement in the underlying cause and are therefore required for nocturnal use for the rest of the person's life. OSA affects approximately 1.5mn people within the UK and despite the market size for sleep apnoea devices being $4.4Bn in 2017, there remains no product that can treat the condition with only surgery as a last resort in severe cases with no guarantee of success.Snoozeal have developed a device which fits onto the tongue to deliver a daily 20min treatment regime which changes the physiology of the contracting muscle at the rear of the tongue through mild electric pulses, or neuromodulation. Increasing the tongue tone stops it collapsing backwards and blocking the airway, providing a long-term cure.This project will further develop the Snoozeal device into a connected intelligent platform "SnooZeal-Connect" which will collect biosensor information from the device during treatment. Machine-learning and AI based methods will classify this data to determine the level of sleep apnoea and provide personalised treatment regimes. SnooZeal-Connect will facilitate low-cost convenient intervention at home and close the health and well-being gap for millions of sufferers. It will also reduce the burden on health services by reducing the direct cost of treating severe sleep apnoea, as well as the cost of treating the long-term health impacts from OSA.