WVU is improving its home sleep apnea detection device to help with more effective diagnosis and treatment

MORGANTOWN — Scientists from West Virginia University, thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation, have placed a device on patients’ fingers or wrists to detect sleep apnea, which will facilitate early diagnosis and treatment of the disease.

Dr. Sunil Sharma, N. Leroy Lapp Professor and division chief of the Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine Fellowship Program at the WVU School of Medicine, received the award after working with other WVU researchers to develop prototypes and secure a patent.

“It’s about taking technology from the lab to the patient’s bedside,” Sharma said. “This grant will help us connect with people with a high level of expertise and combine their strengths with ours. We will work with experts in artificial intelligence, software production and improvement, industrial production and technology and hardware improvement.

Support from the NSF Innovation Corps program will enable collaboration between experts from WVU and other institutions.

The prototypes include a watch and a finger clip, similar to a pulse oximeter, that patients wear while sleeping at home. Both use artificial intelligence technology to measure and analyze data collected via an app on a smartphone or tablet.

“The purpose of these devices is to collect information from the bloodstream about how oxygen is delivered and circulates in the blood,” Sharma explained. “Based on the oxygen signals and the algorithms that we put in place – the way we designed and calibrated them – they can accurately reflect what might be happening in the body without having to undergo very expensive testing.”

Sharma pointed out that the results go beyond positives and negatives. The technology can also show the severity of the disease, which is an indicator of whether patients should be treated with continuous positive airway pressure, CPAP or simple lifestyle changes.

Obstructive sleep apnea, or OSA, is a common condition in which the airway partially or completely collapses, resulting in decreased oxygen saturation. Although symptoms include loud snoring and excessive daytime sleepiness, many people show no symptoms. About 80% of OSA cases worldwide remain undiagnosed.

“Delayed diagnosis can lead to worsening of comorbidities such as heart failure, stroke and atrial fibrillation as OSA acts as a fuel for other diseases,” Sharma said.

The idea for developing a home device came about after a five-year study Sharma and colleagues conducted at WVU Medicine JW Ruby Memorial Hospital that focused on screening hospitalized patients for general medical conditions and heart failure to determine whether they should be further evaluated for OSA.

People diagnosed with the disease after additional testing were given PAP (positive airway pressure) therapy and instructed to use it for at least four hours each night 70 percent of the time. When they followed the patients for six months, the researchers found that those who did not adhere to PAP therapy as directed had significantly more hospital readmissions and emergency room visits for heart and lung disease than those who adhered to the therapy.

“The above data, complemented by similar results from studies at other institutions, strongly suggest that earlier detection of OSA may facilitate the control of comorbidities,” said Sharma.

The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, also examined healthcare spending and hospital resources. The results showed that early detection and treatment resulted in lower costs for patients and healthcare facilities in both inpatient and outpatient settings. In addition, because fewer people required hospitalization, more beds were available for patients with other conditions.

While the reasons for the disease going undetected vary, Sharma said the lack of availability of sleep doctors and sleep labs, as well as low awareness and associated costs for patients, play a role.

“Sleep labs are so busy that sometimes it takes weeks or months to get an appointment. During this time, they will likely be readmitted to hospital and their condition will significantly deteriorate,” he said.

Home testing is also more beneficial for patients who don’t want to spend the night under supervision in an unfamiliar environment, which Sharma said can impact their sleep quality.

The devices may also be particularly useful for people living in rural areas who may have to travel a long distance to get to a testing site or who may need to rely on family members for transportation.

Sharma said he hopes the study will raise awareness that early detection of OSA can improve the prognosis of patients with underlying conditions and prevent others from developing more serious conditions.

“We’re learning more and more about this disease, how it affects other conditions, and how patients can be asymptomatic and still have the disease in their system,” he said. “We know we can’t cure it if we can’t detect it.”