Timeshifter, the circadian technology company best known for one of the most-downloaded jet lag apps in the world, announced at the Global Wellness Summit the launch of a new circadian app for shift workers.
The new app is intended to be used by shift workers, regardless of their given work schedule. When a shift worker imports their schedule and enters their sleep pattern, chronotype, and personal preferences, the app will provide personalized advice to tackle the underlying problem of circadian and sleep disruption. By providing personalized advice, Timeshifter will help shifter workers increase their safety and productivity while improving their quality of life, according to a statement from the company.
“Our plan has always been to move beyond jet lag to solve other large, previously unsolved circadian-based problems,” Mickey Beyer-Clausen, the co-founder and CEO of Timeshifter, says in a press release. “With almost 700 million people working shifts and struggling with irregular work schedules, we can’t continue to ignore the many negative consequences shift work causes.”
Winner of the National Sleep Foundation’s 2019 SleepTech Award for ‘Best App,’ one of Health Magazine’s 2020 Sleep Awards, and a Phocuswright 2019 Innovator, Timeshifter’s jet lag app is one of the most-downloaded and highest-rated jet lag app worldwide. Based on more than 70,000 post-flight surveys, travelers who followed Timeshifter’s advice versus travelers who didn’t follow their Timeshifter plan were 17 times less likely to report very severe jet lag.
Both the jet lag app and new shift work app are being developed with Harvard Medical School associate professor Steven Lockley, PhD, who specializes in the study of circadian rhythms and sleep, and has provided shift work solutions to NASA’s Mission Control and Formula 1 teams.
“With its jet lag app, Timeshifter has demonstrated an ability to translate sleep and circadian neuroscience into a tool that helps travelers proactively reset their circadian clock quickly to new time zones,” says Lockley in a statement. “Shift work can cause many of the same problems as jet lag but is a bigger challenge as the problems are not isolated to a specific trip but are part of the workers’ everyday lives. As with jet lag, the app must address not only the sleep and circadian factors underlying shift work but must combine this with practical advice that workers can follow. This approach has worked well for jet lag, and we are excited to apply the same principles to a problem to improve the health, wellbeing, safety, and productivity of the many millions of shift workers worldwide.”
