SleepTechNL

Sleep fulfils vital biological functions for our physical and mental wellbeing and productivity. We have only recently begun to understand these functions in highly controlled experimental environments, however traditional sleep research in the laboratory is effortful, expensive and artificial. This restricts both our understanding of the role of sleep in real-life settings as well as effective applications to improve sleep health.

The SleepTechNL consortium will leverage recent technological and research advances to transfer sleep monitoring and modulation to real-world applications, allowing to improve and fully integrate sleep health in clinical and professional settings and everyday lifestyle. More specifically, the consortium aims to answer research questions within three major clusters. A) How can new technologies help to monitor and modulate sleep outside of the laboratory? B) How does sleep contribute to development in early life; how does stress interact with sleep in mid-life; how can improving sleep prevent/mitigate neurogedeneration in late life? C) How can we implement these technological/research innovations into clinical and professional settings and lifestyle to optimize health and performance?

The consortium aims for multiple scientific and societal breakthroughs based on high-quality yet affordable sleep technology that will be integrated in lifestyle, professional settings such as work, sport and the penal system, and in clinical settings such as neonatal, psychiatric and elderly care.

The diverse set of consortium partners will be able to build on an interdisciplinary set of expertise from hardware and software engineering including data science approaches, over neonatological somnological and psychiatric expertise of medical and neuroscientific experts, to theoretical reflection and applied approaches to change behavior in health care, work and lifestyle.