Apple, IBM Team Up To Learn More About Sleep's Link To Health
SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) -- Apple and IBM are teaming up to learn as much as they can about sleep.
The SleepHealth App will be used to help build the world's broadest study on sleep with data that can be shared with other researchers in an open-source format.
"It will ask you questions, standardized surveys. It allows you to use some neat features like the sleep concierge, where you can send your loved one a tweet, or a text saying that it's time for bed," Darrel Drobnich President of the American Sleep Apnea Association said. His group developed the app.
The app asks users to enter their information for a week every three months. IBM's Watson Health Cloud, which is HIPAA compliant, will then collate and analyze the data. Researchers can then connect that data with other information within the cloud.
The app isn't just for users with sleep problems, Dobnich says.
"Sleep is, along with diet and exercise, one of those major fundamentals of general wellbeing. So, we want to collect data on both people that are having sleep problems, and people that are healthy sleepers," he said.
Researchers hope to find links between sleep health, and chronic health problems like Alzheimer's, heart disease, and diabetes.
