Part sleep-tracking wearable, part electronic alternative to sleep supplements, this new wellness device could be useful to sleep patients who prioritize convenience.

By Sree Roy

People toss over-the-counter (OTC) sleep health supplements like melatonin and cannabidiol into their shopping carts with the ease of throwing socks into a laundry basket. 

Though sleep specialists understand these substances’ side effect profiles and efficacy (or lack thereof), most people desiring quick solutions for their sleeplessness do not—nor are they necessarily persuaded to exert effort into cures such as cognitive behavioral therapy. Consumers may also sink hundreds of dollars into sleep-tracking wearables, only to worsen their problems with the added anxiety of achieving a specific “sleep score” without a clear action plan.

In Cambridge, Mass, a team of researchers and developers at a company called Elemind Technologies Inc has dedicated years to refining a product to meet the sleepless where they are. “We’re trying to be the electronic equivalent to a pill,” says Meredith Perry, Elemind co-founder and CEO. 

The Elemind “sleep, on demand” headband is an alternative to both OTC sleep aids and consumer sleep trackers within a single wearable. The wellness device tracks brainwaves using three frontal electroencephalogram electrodes, then uses bone-conduction headphones to deliver precisely timed pink noise to nudge users toward sleep via acoustic neuromodulation. 

As a wellness product, Elemind is not US Food and Drug Administration-cleared to diagnose or treat any sleep disorders. Still, it is an elegant option for sleep specialists to potentially proffer as an alternative for patients who’d otherwise favor pills. It can also be a sleep tracker adjunct to traditional insomnia management plans, with the added possibility of accelerating sleep onset.

Decreased sleep onset latency—10.5 ± 15.9 minutes in people who began with a sleep onset latency of 30 minutes or more—was found by Elemind investigators in a small study that suggested “this approach is effective at accelerating sleep onset on a scale similar to pharmaceuticals, and with fewer apparent negative side effects.”

Elemind aligns a sound-based evoked response potential with the excitable trough phase of an alpha wave, which is thought to hasten sleep by decreasing subsequent alpha power. It can be used at bedtime, as well as to help “restart” sleep in the middle of the night.

To trigger the sound pulse, Elemind executes a feat many professional sleep systems don’t: It identifies alpha brainwaves in real time. The low computational latency is courtesy of Elemind’s proprietary endpoint-corrected Hilbert Transform, which, according to the company, is an advancement in signal processing agnostic to the source of oscillations. 

The identification is highly precise, according to Ryan Neely, PhD, Elemind’s vice president of science and research, who cites an unpublished internal cross-validation study with the Nox A1S that found a high match between Elemind data and the Nox data when people wore both systems concurrently.

Unlike the lingering impacts of pharmaceuticals dragging into people’s waking hours, the Elemind headband only impacts a person when it’s worn and turned on. “Once the device is off, it’s not nudging the person toward sleep anymore,” Neely says. Also, whereas only the dose and timing can be adjusted for drugs, neurostimulation presents a menu of pulse duration, frequency, amplitude, pulse shape, and other options.

At $349 for the headband (plus at least $7 a month for the optional app membership), Elemind’s price towers above a $15 bottle of melatonin pills. But, Perry argues, it’s less than $1 a day when used for at least a year. What’s more, it’s at the price point of other consumer sleep trackers—but this one doesn’t just track sleep; it offers a real chance of helping sleep happen.