Sleep eDiary: A mobile health application for insomnia assessment

Sleep disorders, such as insomnia can seriously affect the individual personality, performance and even lead to psychological problems. The optimal way to obtain an accurate insomnia diagnosis is through polysomnographic (PSG) measurements and face-to-face patients' consultations. Though a number of commercial wearable PSG systems are now available for patients to use in the comfort of their homes they do not incorporate daily subjective reporting essential for effective insomnia diagnosis and treatment. The subjective data are necessary to explore the patient's day-to-day sleep hygiene, as part of the clinician's diagnosis of insomnia. Sleep diaries, in which the patient records information about their sleep patterns, have the ability to allow practical, economical and detailed assessment of insomnia conditions, paving the way for a successful treatment. Smartphones offers a great opportunity to exploit mobile technology to implement electronic versions of these sleep dairies. A mobile application for insomnia treatment needs to meet specific requirements of interface, question relevance and transferring of data. However, existing Android solutions do not meet these three criteria. In this paper, we propose a new sleep diary solution for insomnia assessment and diagnosis. Our application has the advantage of being easy to use, simple and secure. It allows the transfer of recorded data to the clinician, thereby reducing the number of daily visits.