LAS VEGAS, Nev. – “The reason sleep deprivation is still not resolved despite its significance is that sleep data is inaccurate. We need a new approach to get accurate, customized sleep data.”

Mehmet Oz, an attending physician at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia Medical Center, emphasized the importance of sleep data, speaking at the Digital Health Summit as part of CES 2020 events in Las Vegas, Nev., on Tuesday. Oz is the host of the Dr. Oz Show, an American TV program on health.

According to Oz, one-third of Americans sleep less than recommended seven hours a day, and the sleep deprivation was associated with the incidence of diabetes or hypertension prognostic symptoms and obesity.

If people have a good night’s sleep, they can manage hypertension, diabetes, and obesity. Still, it is challenging to tackle the sleep disorder, he said. Doctors cannot record sleep data directly while a patient was asleep, which makes it difficult to earn accurate sleep data, he added.

“To date, doctors have prescribed medicines for patients' sleep problems only with limited information provided by patients,” Oz said. “If a patient says he or she slept for three hours, it could be wrong information because it is an ex-post evaluation. Doctors need accurate sleep information.”

Oz teamed up with ResMed, a sleep solution company, to establish a joint venture, SleepScore Labs, and built a new approach to collect accurate sleep data.

Participating in CES 2020, SleepScore Lab said the company uses what it calls the world’s most accurate, non-contact sleep monitoring technology to track and record a user’s sleep pattern. By measuring millions of hours of sleep, a physician can selectively check a patient’s sleep hours and how long the patient tossed and turned. Graphs will show whether a patient had a quality sleep or a poor one.

Oz called it “BOLD,” or Big, Objective, Longitudinal Data.

He went on to say that SleepScore’s recently developed application provides accurate information to physicians by measuring whether a patient was moving while sleeping or having sleep apnea.

Doctors should deal with sleep problems with big, objective, and longitudinal data, he added.

Oz said smoking disturbed sleep more than coffee did. “Sleep data collected by BOLD showed that drinking, and particularly smoking, interrupted sleep more than caffeine did,” he said.

Drinking coffee reduced sleep time by one minute, while drinking alcohol deprived 3.6 minutes, and smoking, 12 minutes, Oz said. Sleep efficiency after smoking was visibly lower (minus 1.74 percent) than after drinking coffee (minus 0.15 percent).

“People have easily overlooked sleep in health management, but a good night’s sleep can help reduce weight, blood pressure, and blood sugar,” Oz said. “By using BOLD, we will be able to check individual users’ sleep patterns and provide curated methods to raise the quality of sleep.”