Sleep-PTSD

In this project, Laura Bajor, Enrique Gutiérrez and myself want to significantly improve the treatment of PTSD-related sleep problems by creating a Collaboration Support Tool that processes and delivers sleep data from wearable devices and delivers it to patients and providers in a format that facilitates improved collaboration and outcomes. Our intent is to create a system with the potential to improve quality of life for millions of Americans living with PTSD, to prevent the onset of associated chronic conditions and to preserve valuable resources on a systems-level.

Why is this important? Around 13 million Americans suffer from PTSD, a condition often resulting in disturbed sleep. Left untreated, this sleep disruption can worsen symptoms and contribute to additional health issues. Current treatment decisions rely heavily on unreliable self-reports while wearable devices offer a more accurate solution, providing valuable insights into sleep patterns. Yet, challenges and barriers in effectively utilizing these devices remain: Patients may lack resources and knowledge to harness the full potential of wearables; Simultaneously, healthcare providers may struggle to interpret wearable data effectively, hindered by time and training constraints.

Despite these hurdles, the implementation of a wearable-based system holds significant potential. This approach could foster enhanced patient-provider collaboration, ultimately leading to improved sleep quality and overall outcomes for individuals struggling with PTSD.

At this moment, we are in an initial phase of the project. My role in particular revolves around the technical implementation: building a pipeline to get input data from Oura API, cleaning, processing and building a prototype dashboard. I’m extremely excited about the process of creating a tool from scratch. As a team, we currently focus our efforts in solving the following central question: Does availability of objective sleep data from wearables, aggregated and delivered in useful form to patients/providers, improve patient/provider collaboration and total sleep time?