German electronics company Infineon is working with Sleepiz, a Swiss digital health firm. to provide easy-to-use sleep monitoring at home.

Billions of people are facing sleep problems. According to scientific research, about one billion people alone suffer from sleep apnoea, an interrupted breathing during the night. This is leading to various health consequences including snoring and daytime fatigue, along with more difficult issues such as heart problems and diabetes.

Diagnosing sleep apnoea is difficult and often includes observing a patient in a sleep laboratory, a stressful situation that can lead to deviating results.

To solve the problem, Infineon collaborated with Sleepiz to develop a system that can be integrated into any connected smart home device ranging from smart speakers to bed lamps. Based on Infineon’s Xensiv 60GHz radar technology and Sleepiz algorithms, it is directed at those that address the broader consumer market.

“Xensiv radar sensors offer a great opportunity for healthcare applications as they allow to accurately measure vital signs such as heartbeat and breathing rate without touching the body or intruding on privacy,” said Philipp von Schierstaedt, senior vice president at Infineon. “Together with Sleepiz, Infineon has developed innovative sleep monitoring to be integrated into smart home and healthcare devices that is exceptionally precise. We are keen to help improve the sleep and life quality of people.”

Soumya Sunder Dash, CEO of Sleepiz, added: “With Infineon’s decades of radar experience and our expertise in analysing respiratory and sleep-related diseases and disorders, we make sleep monitoring easy to use while delivering accurate data. Together, we bring sleep lab technology to consumers, allowing them to observe their sleep and health in the comfort of their own homes. Jointly, we open a new market of high-precision sleep monitoring at home and our software helps to make medical-grade insights accessible to everyone.”

Understanding vital data can help millions of patients and doctors detect sleep disorders such as apnoea to improve sleep quality. Thanks to Xensiv 60GHz radar technology, relevant vital sign data are collected contactless and anonymously without identifying the person. Due to the high sensitivity, the technology can detect these data and sense sub-millimetre movements of the person closest to the device through various materials, such as blankets. Data are analysed with the help of machine-learning algorithms from Sleepiz and stored anonymously in a cloud for the user to access.

Sleepiz has conducted many clinical studies with clinics such as Charité in Berlin and Ruhrlandklink in Essen and other sleep researchers, proving the accuracy of their algorithms. As a medical device manufacturer, Sleepiz is already selling medical sleep monitoring devices with Infineon’s radar technology to doctors in Switzerland and Germany. Now the two companies would like to revolutionise the consumer market and integrate their technology into smart speakers and other smart home devices.

Sleepiz was founded in 2018 by Marc Rullan, Max Sieghold and Soumya Sunder Dash as a spin-off from ETH Zürich. The company has more than 50 employees across two continents and has received support from institutions such as Innosuisse (Swiss Federal Innovation Agency) and the European Commission.

Infineon is a semiconductor specialist with around 50,280 employees worldwide. It generated revenue of about €11bn in 2021.