Sleep - Tracking has boomed in popularity worldwide, giving researchers access to millions of hours of sleep data and transforming our understanding of how to improve our sleep, and in turn how sleep affects our health.
When a natural disaster hits, or a COVID variant spreads, or when Christmas approaches or daylight savings begins, researchers can now see widespread changes in sleep and health metrics at the scale of a city or a country.
"We can look at a huge chunk of the world now," Michael Gradisar, Sleep Cycle's head of science, says.
"Sleep is one of the first things to go wrong in a person's health. Sleep is the canary in the mine."
Sleep is crucial to good health, but humans are generally bad at assessing how well they're doing it. You can count calories or time runs to improve nutrition and exercise, but, until recently, tracking sleep meant a night in a lab, swaddled in electrodes.
AutoSleep was released in early 2016. Eight years later, the paid app has more than 5 million users, Mr Walsh says.
"China is a very big market for us."
During the pandemic sales of devices like smart watches grew as people with disposable income turned to technology to optimise their health and fitness.
Investment followed, and the accuracy of some devices improved. Apple, for instance, beefed up its smart - watch, adding sensors to track the electrical activity of the heart, as well as blood oxygen content and body temperature.
"Everything flourished during the pandemic because of commercial reasons. The market was so big," Dr Pires says.
Read More: Sleep-tracking devices are wiring the world for the study of sleep. What will we find? - ABC News
Kommentare