At CES, a new motivation for the connected home: a good night’s sleep (Updated)

As any out-of-towner attending a conference as vast as the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week can attest, sleep deprivation can have an impact on performance. But aside from the occasional jaunt to a conference, sleep disorders over time, such as insomnia, can also have a significant impact on long-term health as well. A hard working, hard living lifestyle has produced a national crisis of sleep deprivation.

The market opportunity has not been lost on vendors at CES, particularly in the realm of the connected home where temperature, lighting, and music can be programmed based on data collected from sleep monitors. Or de-siloed from pillows, mattresses, and wearables. Medical and clinical wearables targeting sleep disorders represent a $5 billion potential market opportunity, noted Daniel Ruppar, Frost & Sullivan research director for connected health, who presented at the Summit.

It was against this backdrop that Dr. Mehmet Oz, TV talk show host and cardiologist, launched a joint venture at the CES Digital Health Summit between his TV program, ResMed and Pegasus Capital Advisors, to build on aggregated sleep data from RedMed’s ongoing SleepScore study. The long-term goal of SleepScore Labs is to harness this data to develop consumer sleep devices.

Oz used some time to share some of the findings from a SleepScore Labs’ report. Nearly 80 percent of Americans get less than seven hours of sleep a night, Oz noted. Women tend to sleep longer than men but not by a huge amount — men average 5 hours, 45 minutes of sleep while women average 6 hours, 9 minutes.

One example of the research and development partners SleepScore Labs is working with is Lighting Science Group, an LED business that seeks to use SleepScore technology to measure the effectiveness of its product, GoodNight LED pre-sleep bulb.

What’s interesting at CES is just how widespread sleep technology was at the show, from some of the largest technology companies to the most humble startup, from infant devices tracking movement through smart fabrics woven into sleepwear to smart mattresses that prevent a loved one from snoring. Here are some highlights from CES’ website and company news releases:

Urban Hello’s REMI device is an alarm clock for kids that claims to use artificial intelligence to coach kids to sleep better. It includes a sleep quality tracker, a coach to help families establish a regular sleep routine. There’s also a nightlight, a baby monitor and music player.

REM-Fit showed a smart pillow, ZEEQ, to monitor and analyze sleep, “react” to snoring and plays music to ease users into sleep.  It also enlists a companion app.

Sleep Number Bed launched a 360-degree smart bed that’s designed to learn the user’s sleep habits so that an alarm goes off at the lightest part of the user’s sleep. It also warms feet up to improve sleep quality. An adjustable base fits to each sleeper’s ideal position throughout the night to stop users from snoring.

Nightingale developed a smart home sleep system that combines sound akin to white noise with nighlights. Cambridge Sound Management developed the acoustic system to cancel out disruptive indoor and outdoor noises with built-in, multi-color LED nightlights and also comes with soothing nature sounds. The device, which plugs into a wall mounted outlet, can use WiFi to connect to Amazon Alexa and smart home appliances such as Ring or Nest.

Although Samsung is developing a set of sensors referred to as SleepSense to track information and provide insights for how well users sleep, it was not shown at CES.

 

Photo: Sleep Number 360 Smart bed