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在睡眠过程中，喉咙的肌肉和软组织放松并塌陷，导致气道完全堵塞10秒或更长时间。在极端情况下，阻塞性睡眠呼吸暂停是一种潜在的致命疾病，但对于中度阻塞性睡眠呼吸暂停患者来说，经常受到干扰的睡眠带来的疲劳会严重影响生活质量。如果不及时治疗，这种情况会增加患高血压、冠心病、中风和糖尿病的风险。目前的治疗需要在睡觉时持续使用防止气道阻塞的装置。它们对根本原因没有任何改善作用，因此在人的余生中都需要在夜间使用。在英国，睡眠呼吸暂停影响了大约150万人，尽管2017年睡眠呼吸暂停设备的市场规模达到44亿美元，但仍然没有一种产品可以治疗这种疾病，在严重的情况下，只有手术是最后的手段，而且不能保证成功。snosnozeal公司开发了一种可以安装在舌头上的设备，每天进行20分钟的治疗，通过轻微的电脉冲或神经调节来改变舌头后部收缩肌肉的生理机能。增加舌音可以防止它向后塌陷，阻塞气道，提供长期治疗。该项目将进一步将snosnozeal设备开发成一个连接的智能平台“snosnozeal - connect”，该平台将在治疗期间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。snosnozeal - 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费用以及治疗阻塞性睡眠呼吸暂停造成的长期健康影响的费用，减轻卫生服务部门的负担。

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.