Peter Hames, cofounder and CEO of Big Health, a healthtech company, speaks with Forbes about the smartphone application Sleepio for insomnia.
Big Health, or more specifically our first product Sleepio, was born out of my own experience with insomnia – an incredibly distressing experience. I’m fortunate enough to have a degree in Experimental Psychology, so I know there’s strong evidence behind non-drug therapies such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). But when I asked my doctor for a course of CBT, all he would give me was sleeping pills.
Out of desperation I got my hands on a self-help book written by world sleep expert Prof. Colin Espie, and used it to self-administer a program of CBT. Although it was a very manual process, I was sleeping well after just a few weeks. That opened my eyes to the power of CBT, and how technology could (and should) be used to provide it to the millions in need. After a cold call and a train journey, the author of that book, Prof Colin Espie, became the Co-Founder of Big Health.
