Local startups bet big on sleep technology

WBUR podcast, Boston. This is up next. I'm Sharon Brody. Technology that promises to help you get a better night's sleep is on a meteoric rise. Four local startups have raised tens of millions of dollars from investors to develop wearable sleep tech. The companies make products like earbuds, headbands, and sleep masks that claim to help you snooze. Scott Kersner, columnist from our editorial partner Mass Live, has been investigating and... In the pursuit of journalism, napping. Hi, Scott. Sharon, I'm aware of the challenge of talking about sleep technology without putting people to sleep. Okay, so you actually went and tried one of these products from a local company called Nocturnal. Tell us about that. I tried to set up the test so that I would get a great afternoon nap. I had lunch and then I went over to visit the company at their office. They have a little nap room set up where they do their testing. They gave me the choice of, do I want a recliner or a little cot? And I took the recliner. And the idea behind the mask is it has a bunch of sensors that can tell if you're awake or you're in a particular stage of sleep, early stage, deep sleep. And they try to stimulate your sense of balance by delivering kind of these electrical pulses behind your ears. And so it's based on some research that shows like if your mom is rocking you as a baby or you're lying in a hammock, that back and forth rocking motion helps put you to sleep. And so they're trying to do that artificially with this sleep mask. Did it work? It didn't really work for me. I fell asleep for maybe 10 minutes of my 26-minute test, but there was kind of a little bit of a... shocking. I call it like a rubber band snapping sensation behind my ears that they were trying to adjust. And so it may have been that this is really an early prototype that isn't ready for prime time just yet. Now that nocturnal product, as you said, is a sleep mask. Two of the other local companies, Jon Ossoff Sleep and Saund make earbuds for sleep, right? How did those work? Well, both of those companies, interestingly, sprang from Bose Corporation, the big audio company that's been here for a few decades and continuing. So Jon Ossoff SleepBuds are the continuation of that product. And it's almost like having a noise machine or a noise blocking device in your ear that you sleep with. Sond is doing something a little more sophisticated with AI. And they're trying to have both an in-ear product that helps you go to sleep and knows what's going on with you.

physiologically, and then can also coach you to get better sleep. Okay, so the CDC does say that roughly 45% of Americans wake up not feeling rested every day. So we know there's a market, but why is sleep taking off right now? in part because of that market. And then the other half is kind of around wearables. I think that over the last 10 years, people have gotten used to wearing different technology. They wear the aura ring around their finger. They have something on their wrist. And having a sleep mask or having some earbuds that you wear at night may just be the next step here. These are not medical devices. They don't have to be approved by the FDA. What do sleep experts say about this tech? I mean, do they have any concerns? I think there are a lot of sleep experts who say they would love to see more research about what these actually do in hundreds or thousands of people rather than just maybe the reviews you find online that say, this helped me go to sleep. But the interesting kind of disconnect here is that I think if you went to a sleep clinic or maybe your primary care doctor and said, hey, I'm looking for something to help me get better sleep, they would probably run through the roster of things like... Is your room dark enough? Are you looking at your phone before you go to sleep? What's the temperature of your room? You know, kind of all the classic things that help people sleep. What are you watching for next in the sleep aid tech space? You know, the thing that everybody is looking for is more comprehensible data about what's going on with your health and probably some nudges into better behaviors, right? Like, hey, I noticed you went to sleep at 1145 a couple nights last week, but your optimal time to go to sleep is actually 1030, like trying to coax people into routines that work for them, you know, in plain English. Scott Kersner, columnist with our editorial partner, Mass Live. Thank you. Thanks so much, Erin. You can read Scott Kersner's Full Piece at MassLive.com.