Today we are rolling out a major update to Somnee, with the addition of sleep reporting in the Somnee app. Our customers have been asking for more insight into how Somnee is improving their sleep, and the StimScience team has been working hard to respond with this significant new feature.
There are a lot of other devices and apps out there that can track your sleep. Somnee will always be first-and-foremost a sleep fixer, not a sleep tracker, and we wanted to introduce sleep reporting that is different from what our users might get from a watch or a smart ring. Somnee sleep reporting is differentiated from other sleep trackers in three important ways:
- Sleep insights based on brain signals. A great night’s sleep starts with a 15 minute Somnee stim session at bedtime that helps nudge your brain from an active wake state to a state of sleep readiness. Many Somnee users have asked for more visibility into how Somnee’s algorithm works to improve their sleep, and in response our team has created a new set of metrics that reflect your readiness for sleep onset, maintenance, depth, and quality - all based on the brain frequencies measured by Somnee right after your nightly stim session. Even if you take the headband off after your stim session, these brain-based sleep metrics, which are only available from Somnee, will appear in the app’s sleep report.
- Sleep lab accuracy. If you choose to keep the Somnee headband on while you sleep, the built-in EEG sensor will continue to measure brain activity in order to track your sleep for the night. Most sleep trackers measure movement or heart rate, and use that data to estimate whether you were asleep or awake. But sleep is a brain activity, which is why professional sleep labs rely on brain signals to measure sleep. When compared to the sleep lab standard (polysomnography), most sleep reports from apps, watches, or smart rings are only 65-70% accurate. Because Somnee measures brain activity directly, our overnight sleep reporting models are able to achieve a best-in-class 80% accuracy.
- Less is more (restful). It's a bit counterintuitive, but some people find that they actually start sleeping worse after they start tracking their sleep. This phenomenon, called “orthosomnia”, occurs when people become overly fixated on the details of their sleep scores leading to sleep-related anxiety. Our goal is for you to sleep well with Somnee, not obsess over the data in your Somnee app. The design of our sleep report strikes a balance between providing insight into how you are sleeping, with the main top-level measures that sleep scientists and clinicians tend to look at, but without an overwhelming number of detailed metrics or made-up scores.
Ram Gurumoorthy, our Founder and Chief Science and Technical Officer, had this to say about the new Somnee sleep reporting feature: “Our team worked incredibly hard to finetune the models behind our sleep reports so they are as accurate as possible. We are especially proud of the new sleep metrics that are based on post-stimulation brain signals. Because we have access to those post-stim brain signal readings and the more complete overnight sleep metrics, we were able to validate that those post-stim metrics are a useful predictor of sleep quality and duration”.
Somnee users will see the new sleep reporting feature when they update to the latest version of the Somnee app. We can’t wait to hear what you think!