On Thursday, a Belgian sleep diagnostics company named Sunrise announced plans to begin delivering sleep care in the U.S. through the acquisition of Dreem Health, a California-based sleep clinic.
Sunrise was founded in 2015 to simplify the patient journey for those who suffer from poor sleep. The company has raised more than $35 million from investors including Amazon’s Alexa Fund, VIVES Partners and Kurma Partners.
Access to sleep medicine is a worldwide problem, pointed out Sunrise CEO Laurent Martinot. In the U.S., there is only one sleep doctor for every 45,000 people.
“Growing up with a father who is a sleep specialist, I understood the challenges faced by those with sleep conditions — the struggle of getting accurate diagnoses, the frustration of long wait times and the discomfort of treatments for many. I also understood the importance of sleep on one’s overall health,” Martinot remarked.
Now that it’s acquired Dreem Health, Sunrise has begun providing telehealth services to U.S. patients. They can either come to Sunrise with a prescription for a sleep test, or they can obtain a prescription from the company’s care team, which involves an online survey and virtual consultation, Martinot explained.
Once they have a prescription, patients use Sunrise’s sleep sensors to monitor their sleep. After this, Sunrise connects patients with a sleep specialist who can then help determine a diagnosis and create a care plan.
These services are currently available for patients in California, Iowa, Maryland and Washington — and the company said its offerings are slated to be available nationwide sometime next year.
Through the acquisition, Sunrise is gaining Dreem Health’s payer network, which includes partnerships with Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna, Medicare and UnitedHealthcare.
Dreem Health’s platform offers a range of treatment options, such as oral appliances, positive airway pressure therapy, and cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, Martinot noted.
He also said that Sunrise and Dreem Health have always shared the same vision to fix and ease the patient journey for people in need of sleep care.
“Building our digitalized version of the sleep clinic was the next logical step in advancing this long-term mission. With Dreem Health now part of our team, we’re moving beyond just diagnosis to providing end-to-end care. We can help those suffering from poor sleep get screened, diagnosed and treated in just a few days — all from the comfort of their home, making sleep medicine not just more simple but more accessible as well,” Martinot declared.
In his view, BetterNight and Ognomy are two of Sunrises’ main competitors. Martinot thinks his company’s foundation of science and research helps it stand out from other players in the sleep medicine space.
Sunrise has collaborated with “some of the brightest minds in sleep medicine” to develop its technologies, and the company’s products have been featured in dozens of scientific papers published to advance the healthcare industry’s understanding of sleep apnea, he stated.
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