Perspective—Longitudinal Sleep Monitoring for All: Payoffs, Challenges and Outlook

Abstract

Longitudinal tracking of sleep metrics is important for detecting and managing various diseases, spanning cardiorespiratory disorders to dementia. However, at present, sleep monitoring primarily occurs in specialized medical facilities that are not conducive to long-term studies. In-home solutions either compromise user comfort or signal accuracy in tracking sleep variables and have not yet provided reliable longitudinal data. Here, we survey the current state of sleep trackers and highlight key shortcomings to provide guiding principles for improved sensor system design. We believe that human-centered design of multimodal, low-form-factor, comfortable sensing systems is needed for this increasingly-important area of human health monitoring.