Summary: Children’s Hospital Los Angeles has launched a pioneering pediatric sleep registry using Apple Watch and the WISE-HARE app to collect high-resolution data and train machine learning algorithms to detect sleep disorders at home.
Key Takeaways:
- CHLA has launched a pediatric sleep registry that uses Apple Watch and the WISE-HARE app to gather high-fidelity sleep data from children ages 5-18.
- The goal is to train machine learning algorithms using Apple Watch data to detect sleep disorders and predict ICU needs post-surgery.
- The initiative aims to address the national shortage of pediatric sleep study beds by enabling at-home screening without specialized equipment.
Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) is launching a sleep registry for children using Apple Watch and a data collection app called WISE-HARE (Wearable Intelligent Sensor Enhancement Home Apnea Risk Evaluation).
These will gather high-fidelity data for research, such as training machine learning algorithms from Apple Watch data to detect sleep disorders.
“There are not enough pediatric sleep study beds in the country, which inevitably results in delayed care for children. In looking into solutions to solve this, it was clear that no application currently on the market would give us the immense amount of raw data needed to properly conduct sleep studies on children at home without specialized equipment,” says Eugene Kim, MD, principal investigator and chief of the division of Pain Medicine in the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, in a release.
The app was developed with graduates from Apple’s Developer Academy in Fortaleza, Brazil, who supported the integration of Apple technologies including HealthKit. “This will allow us to create a first-of-its-kind sleep registry, which will be used to train machine learning algorithms from Apple Watch data to detect sleep disorders and inform clinicians on the need for intensive care unit admissions following surgery,” Kim says.
CHLA is enrolling children ages 5-18 years who are scheduled for in-lab polysomnography (PSG). Enrolled participants will use the WISE-HARE app and wear an Apple Watch, in addition to the standard PSG sensors. Over the next year, results from the PSG and Apple Watch devices will be used to train machine learning algorithms to detect sleep disorders, with the ultimate objective of providing patients and families with the ability to screen for these sleep disorders at home without the need for special equipment.
“It was important that the benefits of our research would be made accessible for all patients. For this to happen, we needed a device that was comfortable to wear, commercially available, and didn’t require special training to operate,” Kim. “Apple Watch is a device that many children and their parents are already familiar with. The latest version met our requirements for a platform that allows us to collect and manage enormous amounts of data efficiently and securely.”
Throughout a typical eight-hour sleep test, WISE-HARE will amass over 30 million lines of data per patient. As home to the Virtual Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (vPICU), a data hub for providers in pediatric intensive care units worldwide, CHLA and its team of data scientists are among the few in the country with the expertise and infrastructure required to manage this data.
“The WISE-HARE app has the potential to help alleviate the delays and frustrations caused by the national shortage of pediatric sleep study beds in the coming years,” says CHLA pulmonologist-sleep specialist Emily Gillett, MD. “The Sleep Center and Sleep Laboratory at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles were among the first in the country to focus exclusively on sleep disorders in children, so it’s very fitting that our team at CHLA is pioneering this new sleep monitoring technology with the potential to streamline care for pediatric sleep patients.”
WISE-HARE will be accessible as open-source software and made available to researchers.
The registry was funded by The Robert J. Coury Family Foundation.
