Challenge:
Invent an Internet of Things device to dramatically improve the lives of its users.
Solution:
Night-time wearable to track user's sleep, identify debilitating night terror events, and intervene to help the user regain control of their mind and body. Market: 10 million Americans (children, adults, veterans).
Skills:
Human Factors, Need Finding, Arduino, Digital Healthcare, Research Methods
Night Terror: An intense fear or terror occurring during deep sleep, characterized by sudden awakening, screaming, thrashing, sweating, rapid heart rate, and little recollection of the event.
Night terrors are miserable to endure, can cause both physical and emotional damage, and are very disturbing for ones own sleep and that of those around. Most people grow out of them, which is why they have not received as much scientific attention as sleep apnea, for instance. But they remain a problem for 5 million adults and 4.5 million children in the United States, including myself. I decided to pursue this project because it is close to home and yet has the potential to help many others.
Night terrors are currently dealt with in two ways. The first is scheduled awakening therapy, where you simply set an alarm at regular intervals throughout the night to jolt yourself awake on the off chance that the alarm overlaps with a night terror. The other way is just to live with them and get better at breaking out of them while waiting for them to go away. These are not adequate solutions.
I am in the process of inventing a device that will actively monitor one's sleep, looking for the physiologic markers of a night terror in movement and heart rate. When it senses one, it gives a subtle vibration signal to the user to help them break out of the night terror. A dramatization of a night terror and a concept for NightWatch are shown below.
a dramatization of a night terror
a dramatization of a night terror combated by NightWatch
After developing the concept, I set out to build one for myself. I ordered a small Arduino, an SD card reader, an accelerometer and a heart rate monitor. I assembled the parts, wrote the code, and have been wearing it on my wrist to collect ground truth data.
NightWatch electronics
hand-machined custom delrin and acrylic case
electronics in the case
complete prototype
I brought the device and my data to a sleep doctor at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center and got some great advice on how to move forward. I am now in the process of ground-truthing my data, taking video recordings of myself at night and comparing the footage with the data that I get from NightWatch. I am also digging through the literature to find the patterns associated with various stages of sleep so that my device can identify them and respond appropriately.
I am congruently programming an Apple Watch App to compare the validity of building my own solution from scratch with using the existing hardware of a smart watch to achieve the same function.