As a founder in the health-tech space (sleep-tech/neuro-tech in particular), I think it's more than just related to health-insurance.
My take is it isn't just the tech side of health that is scammy. In sleep and neuro, we see all sorts of products which make outrageous claims that they say are backed by "science" from leading research organizations, but when you go looking for the research, there is nothing there!
I think sometimes people want to believe their own BS. I wonder how often the people selling/peddling their wares believe what they are saying, or just don't care.
We're being very cautious in our GTM to make sure we build a lasting and trusted company at https://soundmind.co
We're beginning by focusing just on slow-wave oscillations, and we can directly measure the impact we are having on those through the EEG in our headband - what was the response to a stimmed SWO vs a non-stim/sham SWO.
We're starting here because there is a large volume of good research in stimulating SWOs.
Does that answer your question? I've just sent you a Linkedin request if you'd like to discuss further.
Absolutely, our target markets don't overlap much (in the early stages) so people who are coming to us for specific issues, we will be recommending to sleep labs.
However, built into how we are going to market, it is doubtful we will have many people who are looking for solutions to their sleep problems. Ignore our current landing page, that is a broad generalization, we will update to be much more specific when the time is right.
Kinda, we're not just measuring sleep, we use auditory stim to improve deep sleep. We're not sure how much data we'll be giving to users, as we don't believe most people benefit from more info about sleep.
At the same time, we are discussing internally giving access to the full data suite for users who do need it. For example, we're working with some researchers, and have interest from air force, etc. who want the full data.
Do you have thoughts on what you loved about having the info from Zeo? Do you use another tracker now?
I use Oura as well as our headband to compare how good our classification is, but I don't find the data itself valuable.
Interesting tech. I help run a business that works with a lot of professional athletes who are interested in improving their sleep quality. We do a lot of the data analysis using various wearables and methods in our middleware; we'd be interested in all the data to evaluate impact and in A:B tests (like we already do with other interventions). I'll reach out to you via Linkedin unless you drop your email here.
I was tracking how many times I woke up at night, how fast I fell asleep and how much deep sleep I got. Not nearly enough for my age as it turned out. Used the data to find out what could improve my sleep. (Exercising in the morning or evening, no big meals before bedtime, etc). Quantified self basically.
I currently use the sleepcycle app. Not nearly as useful as an actual EEG headband.
Maybe consider also giving full access to people like me? Like a dev mode or something.
The non-EEG devices are getting pretty good at that data, your phone next to your bed, not so much...
EEG is probably overkill for most people, but it is the only way to detect SWO, and other parts of sleep we want to manipulate via sound. Plus, having a band on your head with bone conduction gives us an easy way to get sound stim to you.
We'll have something in the future which is more generalized to a larger audience, but we're focused on a few groups that need what we're doing atm.
During your deepest sleep, there are bursts of brain activity called Slow Wave Oscillations. These SWOs are responsible/related to memory consolidation, clearing of amyloid plaques, regulating hormonal response, and more.
When we detect an SWO, we provide a sound (auditory stimulation) and the response of your brain to the sound is to increase the power of the SWO by up to 40%. Much of the existing research measures the improved cognitive response of an individual post sleeping with stim, compared to baseline and sham.
On my task list this month is to write a whitepaper which describes the stim and points to a bunch of the different research (there is lots of it). I'm writing the whitepaper in order to make it easy to understand for investors, and give them a jumping off point to get deeper in the research, should they want to do that.
I'll potentially publish it broader if there is an audience for it.
Yeah, it is surprisingly hard to make a headband that using a standard headband design that stays on. It's one of the things we've struggled with in industrial design. Getting something that is comfortable enough, yet fits.
We think we've got it, but we need to get it on more heads (we have enough testers...).
I'll post about it once we confirm we've got it working, and have our patents in.
I think a key aspect to make it stay on would be to basically make it like a set of helmet straps. One around the head like the zeo, a chin strap and a top vertical strap across the head. A headstrap works when your awake, but when your asleep you do actions like mash your forehead into a pillow and move your head up or down, which was a perfect action to remove the zeo.
My take is it isn't just the tech side of health that is scammy. In sleep and neuro, we see all sorts of products which make outrageous claims that they say are backed by "science" from leading research organizations, but when you go looking for the research, there is nothing there!
I think sometimes people want to believe their own BS. I wonder how often the people selling/peddling their wares believe what they are saying, or just don't care.
We're being very cautious in our GTM to make sure we build a lasting and trusted company at https://soundmind.co