Good sleep is crucial for optimal health at every stage of life, but the challenges for getting a good night’s rest become more pronounced the older we get: Our circadian rhythms shift, common medications can interfere with sleep, and conditions such as nocturia, sleep apnea and insomnia often become more disruptive.
Sleep Reset is on a mission to help people of all ages, especially older adults, get the restful sleep they need. An AgeTech Collaborative™ startup participant, Sleep Reset is a virtual sleep clinic that combines licensed clinical care with a proprietary therapy–based insomnia program and diagnostic tools to provide personalized, at-home treatment for insomnia, sleep apnea and sleep dysfunction.
Through a combination of clinicians, coaches and technology, Sleep Reset helps people improve their sleep and build healthier sleep habits — delivering accessible, evidence-based care at scale without the need for in-person visits.
We spoke with Shimin Ooi, Sleep Reset’s CEO, about the growing awareness of the importance of sleep, how the company is expanding access to clinically validated treatments, and why solving sleep issues is as important to employers as it is for employees.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
What is Sleep Reset is all about?
Sleep Reset is a digital sleep platform that provides licensed clinical care to people across the U.S. and internationally to treat sleep disorders such as insomnia and obstructive sleep apnea. All the products and services we provide are delivered digitally.
Problems related to poor sleep are incredibly common — nearly half of the people in any given population probably have sleep-related issues, whether those are diagnosed or remain undiagnosed. Sleep problems are more prevalent than musculoskeletal issues, diabetes and cancer, yet the problem has been very poorly addressed, and sleep care in the traditional model is actually very difficult to access. For example, the renowned Stanford Sleep Medicine Center has a 12-month waiting list — and that’s just to see a provider. So we wanted to use the best of technology to make sleep-related medical care accessible for anyone who needs it, whether they live in rural Texas or in a big city like New York.
It seems that the conversation around the importance of sleep has been evolving in recent years. What’s your perspective on that?
A decade ago, few people understood just how much sleep impacts their health or that good sleep is worth investing in. You could even sometimes detect a culture of low-key pride about not sleeping well: People would say, “Oh, I was working on this project until 4 a.m.” or “Today I’m surviving on five hours of sleep and three espressos.”
But that’s changing. The rise of various sleep tracking apps and devices such as smartwatches that provide actual sleep data, along with increased sleep education, are helping people realize just how poorly they have been sleeping and the negative consequences that can have. There’s a growing understanding that sleep deprivation affects lots of things, such as a person’s weight, hypertension and even heart disease. Poor sleep also affects your cognitive abilities and reflexes — it can have the same effect as drinking alcohol.
People are also talking with each other more, and more openly, about the importance of sleep, which also helps raise awareness and normalizes it. It’s similar to how people have become more attuned in recent years to the importance of mental health and now talk openly about the benefits of having a therapist.
Given the importance of good sleep and the rising awareness about it, why is it so difficult to access treatment?
The two major types of sleep problems are insomnia and obstructive sleep apnea. For insomnia, historically the gold standard is a treatment called cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I), where you have weekly sessions with a provider who helps you rewire your brain’s association with sleep. The problem is that there are fewer than 1,000 CBT-I therapists in the U.S., so it can be difficult for patients to actually access that care.
It’s similar for obstructive sleep apnea. Traditionally, treating that would involve you going into a sleep lab for an overnight polysomnogram (PSG) study. You’re in a cold sleep lab, hooked up to all these wires — it’s an uncomfortable experience.
Primary care providers (PCPs) can also inadvertently compound the issue. Most PCPs are trained broadly on all sorts of health issues, but less than 10% of them even know that CBT-I exists, let alone recommend that patients try it. So PCPs often end up prescribing sleeping pills, which have all kinds of detrimental effects on people’s health.
So while proven treatments exist, the issue is access. We help solve that problem by shipping home-based sleep tests and solutions directly to patients.
How exactly does your solution work?
We worked with the best sleep researchers, psychologists and sleep doctors to create a CBT-I program for people with insomnia. So instead of visiting a therapist’s office every week, you can access our CBT-I program in bite-size lessons directly through our app. We also pair you with a human coach for one-to-one support. At the root of it, insomnia is a psychological issue where your brain has “forgotten” how to go to sleep, and our program is a little like going back to school to learn how to sleep again. Our CBT-I program is proprietary and has been proven in peer-reviewed, published studies to be clinically effective.
For someone with obstructive sleep apnea, the first step is to get a diagnosis. We ship you a device that consists of finger, wrist and chest sensors that connect to a smartphone app and monitors nine different metrics associated with obstructive sleep apnea. You wear it while you sleep, and the data is sent through the cloud to our platform. Then, one of our board certified sleep medicine physicians looks at your results, interprets it and writes a report for you. Based on the results, we can prescribe the appropriate treatment, including an oral appliance — basically a mouth guard you wear while you sleep — or a CPAP machine.
You’ve entered into an arrangement with UnitedHealthcare (UHC) to help distribute your services. Can you tell us about that?
We started out as a B2C business many years ago. The feedback we got directly from customers gave us a very clear picture of what people want, and that helped us refine our offerings. That gave us confidence that our product was very well developed, so about a year and a half ago, we started to do more on the B2B side. About that time, UHC contacted us because they were launching the UHC Store, a digital storefront that allows its members to choose from and purchase a variety of discounted health and wellness offerings. We were among a handful of companies they included in the launch at the end of last year, and it gives patients confidence that their sleep treatments will be covered in-network.
We do partner with other major health plans such as Aetna, Cigna and Blue Cross Blue Shield across different states. We also have relationships with universities doing research and organizations such as veterans’ groups that want to provide Sleep Reset to their members.
Sleep deprivation obviously impacts individuals, but it impacts businesses, too.
The risks associated with sleep deprivation are real, and they are serious. Sleep deprivation and fatigue contribute meaningfully to workplace errors and accidents. Employers would never allow their employees to do things like operate heavy equipment or perform surgery while under the influence of alcohol or other substances, but if they allow them to work when suffering from chronic sleep deprivation, they’re basically running the same risk. Besides that, sleep problems are a leading cause of workplace productivity loss and absenteeism.
The good news is that there are safe, clinical treatments available. The real question is: How can employers connect employees with that treatment? Sleep Reset offers exactly that with our clinically proven, end-to-end sleep care clinic complete with diagnostics, solutions such our CBT-I program, and telehealth visits with board-certified sleep clinicians — and we’re excited to be providing all that to make better sleep achievable for more people.
What inspired you to get involved with the AgeTech Collaborative, and what has your experience with it been like?
Sleep problems are not evenly distributed across age groups because aging changes a person’s sleep architecture. People in their 20s and 30s may not even think they have issues with sleep. But as people get into their 40s and 50s — especially women who are going through perimenopause or menopause — they start to notice they are struggling with sleep. And many people have heard their grandparents talk about how they can only sleep for four or five hours a night before they wake up. That’s why we wanted to get involved with the AgeTech Collaborative: The population that AgeTech serves really struggles with sleep, and we can help.
We’ve had a wonderful experience with the ATC, especially in the accelerator program where we got access to consumer surveys and a network of experts. As we moved more into the B2B space, there were still a lot of things we were trying to figure out, like what do employers in the trucking industry, for example, really care about? How can we help meet their needs with regard to their employees’ sleep? It was very helpful to leverage ATC’s resources to access those people, talk to them and understand how Sleep Reset can help.
Learn more about Sleep Reset at their website and check out our Startup Directory to discover more startup participants in the AgeTech Collaborative.
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