Damien Testa, PhD | MOONA SAS; David Stoikovitch, MS; Tabya Sultan, BA
Competition Sponsor: EIT Health of the European Union
Awardee Year: 2022
Older adults experience changes in the quantity and quality of their sleep. That modification could be due to the modifying mechanisms underlying the body’s internal clock. A large proportion of older adults, between 40% and 70% of them, have chronic sleep problems. This leads to many negative health outcomes, including reduced quality of life and mental health issues.
Sleep research studies have shown that temperature is a key factor in sleep quality. Fluctuations in body temperature regulate the body’s circadian rhythm and our sleep. It specifically regulates when we go to sleep, how well we sleep, and when we wake up.
It has been reported that older adults are significantly more sensitive to exogenous increases in nighttime ambient temperature than other age groups. That’s why, in the context of global warming, the effect of a rise of 1°C of minimum temperature has been predicted to have on older adults twice the negative effect as for the rest of the population.
In this context, to tackle the problem of getting poor sleep, we have developed a smart system that understands each user’s sleeping pattern and regulates the temperature of the user’s head and neck to help him/her get the best sleep. Our product is active throughout the night, allowing the user to fall asleep faster, get more deep sleep and wake up beautifully rested!
Although this system has already shown great outcomes on elderly users of our existing product, we aim to get additional scientific evidence. For that purpose, we will run specific at-home trials on that population and get precise results on sleep and quality of life improvements. We will also assess how to further adapt the product to the elderly population. For that purpose, we will launch a market research project and use generated insights to develop a specific version of the product.
To conclude, this project will provide a validated, easy-to-use active cooling product that will help the elderly get restful sleep and improve their quality of life. This type of innovation will be even more essential in the current context of global warming.
To learn more about this proposal, email healthylongevity@nas.edu.