Wearable Sleep Technologies: Toward Pervasive Health Management

Sleep accounts for about one-third of the human lifespan and plays a critical role in regulating human body’s physiological processes. Sleep disorders and their accompanying health problems affect one-in-two Canadian adults and their prevalence is increasing. In addition to its critical role in well-being and quality of life, sleep provides a unique baseline window into human body function at rest that can help characterize health and disease patterns.

In this talk, I will give an overview of current sleep technologies and their capabilities and shortcomings in monitoring sleep and health. I will then discuss how advanced sensing technologies combined with powerful data analytic methods and machine learning algorithms can be utilized to develop improved unobtrusive and portable technologies to objectively evaluate sleep, manage sleep, and monitor health status during sleep.

Zhengchen Cai, PhD candidate, will give a brief talk titled "fNIRS as a wearable/personalized technology" prior to Dr. Forouzanfar's talk.

The 1-hour seminar will be followed by a 30-minute round table discussion.