Autonomous Robotic Oral Appliance for Treatment of Obstructive Sleep Apnea
Project Abstract:
Undiagnosed obstructive sleep apnea OSA affects millions of adults not only degrading sleep and quality of life but also increasing the risk of mortality heart failure stroke and heart disease Continuous Positive Airway Pressure CPAP is the goldstandard treatment but 50 of users struggle with adherence Many OSA patients prefer oral appliance OA though cost lack of insurance coverage and inconvenience of testing presents hurdles to their adoption We propose a robotic OA that 1 does not require costly attended sleep studies 2 avoids expensive fabricationcustomization 3 provides improved comfort and 4 can quantify treatment efficacy A 10 adoption by diagnosed OSA patients results in a 400M market however it could be substantially larger should the undiagnosed population being using it to diagnose potential OSA This project aims to integrate our prior work to realize a clinical grade device and utilize it to perform a human trial to demonstrate efficacy
