An Intelligent Bed To Monitor And Reduce Snoring

Habitual snoring is a widespread complication. Most snorers snore predominately when sleeping in supine position. Therefore, therapeutic interventions force snorers to avoid supine position. Devices that restrict the sleeping position or raise alarms when the user obtains the supine position cause discomfort or disrupt sleep resulting in low compliance. Therefore, anti-snoring mechanisms, which lift the trunk of the user without disturbing sleep, have been proposed.

We set out to investigate whether individual interventions provided by beds with lifting mechanisms are able to stop snoring within three minutes (success rate) and whether the bed reduces the snoring index (number of total snores divided by total time in bed). In addition, we investigat whether the trunk elevation provided by the bed is interfering with the subjective sleep quality assessed using the Groningen Sleep Quality Score.

Subjects are observed for four nights (adaptation, baseline, and two intervention nights). During intervention nights, the bed lifts the trunk of the user in closed-loop manner. Subjects are divided in three groups (non-snorers, snorer group one, and snorer group two). Non-snorers are lifted by the bed at random time points during the night. In snorer group one, a stepwise increase of the bed inclination is compared with going directly to a randomly selected angle. In snorer group two, the influence of a small inclination angle (10°) and a big inclination angle (20°) is compared..