OFP Wearables
Monitoring Fatigue in Real-Time with
Cutting-Edge Wearables
Exploring Wearable Technologies in Sleep Monitoring
Actigraphy and Wearables
What is the difference between actigraphy and wearables?
Actigraphy is a measurement of movement, usually through a wrist-worn device, that researchers use to estimate sleep-wake patterns.
Actigraphy was first developed in the early 1970s and is a long-standing tool for the measurement of sleep in real-world environments. Actigraphs are research-grade devices that are accepted for use by medical clinicians, academic researchers, and fatigue risk management systems.
Understanding Wearable Devices
Tracing the Evolution and Application of Wearables
Wearables is a term commonly used to describe technologies worn continuously on one’s person for monitoring activity or health metrics. Many wearables feature sleep-tracking technology and fall under the distinction of consumer sleep technology 1.
Consumer Sleep Technologies (CSTs)
CSTs are computer-based systems available to the general public to improve or self-monitoring sleep.
This kind of technology first entered the consumer market in the early 2010s and includes fitness bands, smart watches or rings, bed monitors, mobile applications, or portable electroencephalogram (EEG) systems.
Wearables and CSTs are designed for personal use rather than for use by clinicians and researchers.Consumer vs. Research-Grade Wearables
While wearables are designed for personal use, some wearables have demonstrated accuracy that is comparable to research-grade actigraphy.
Multiple wearables have been evaluated in a laboratory setting as well as in real-world sleep environments and for the purposes of fatigue risk management using biomathematical modeling.
Advanced Wearable Tech for Fatigue Management
Dive into the details of IBR’s cutting-edge wearable technologies: the Zulu Watch and SleepTank app. Designed specifically for critical work environments, these tools offer precise monitoring and data-driven insights to manage and improve sleep and alertness. Explore each device’s unique features and applications through the tabs below to understand how they contribute to effective fatigue risk management.
SleepTank™
SleepTank is a sleep feedback mobile application (app) that can be used with consumer wearables as a personal sleep hygiene tool and to collect data for research or fatigue risk management purposes. SleepTank is ideal for workers planning sleep to be alert on the job, such as shift workers, airline pilots, and emergency workers.
SleepTank™ allows individual users to monitor how sleep fuels alertness.
- Forecast the impact of prior sleep history on future alertness
- Reflects the cumulative quantity and quality of ALL prior sleep
- Calibrated to individual sleep goal
- Receive warnings when alertness will become seriously impaired
- Plan when to go to bed to restore alertness
- Plan the length and timing of naps to extend alertness
- Works with a range of consumer wearables through terra data integrator
SleepTank allows users to share their data.
- Data is automatically de-identified
- Users must opt-in to data collection with specific group code
- Users may pause data collection or request data deletion
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SleepTank features “Control Mode” to extract data without providing feedback about alertness
- Ideal for pre-post research designs or control groups
Extensive Field Testing of the
SleepTank App
The SleepTank app has been beta-tested in:
- Helicopter Emergency Medical Services (HEMS) Pilots
- Nurses
- Royal Australian Navy Shift Workers
- Cargo Pilots
The Zulu watch is a single sensor actigraph designed for use in aviation and shift-working populations.
- On-wrist sleep scoring of sleep episodes as short as 20 minutes
- Automatic scoring of multiple sleep episodes per day
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On-device storage of up to 80 sleep episodes
- Time in bed
- Sleep efficiency
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On-device storage of up to 7 days’ worth of epoch-by-epoch data
- Off-wrist determination
- Sleep depth estimation
- Continuous data collection- new data will overwrite the older records
- 1 year battery life
- Bluetooth low energy, on demand sync
- Off-wrist detection
- LCD watch display
Zulu Watch Data Extraction and Syncing
Data is extracted from the Zulu watch using the Zulu Data Extractor App.
Zulu Watch Validation
Verified Accuracy
The Zulu watch has been evaluated against gold-standard polysomnography (PSG) and actigraphy in the laboratory8 as well as against self-report sleep diary for accuracy in sleep-wake determination10.
Verified Reliability
The Zulu watch has been compared against the SAFTE-FAST Auto-Sleep sleep prediction algorithm11 and the Unified Model of Performance (UMP) for fatigue risk management predictions of alertness6.
IBR offers a range of research support options for monitoring sleep-wake patterns in real world environments using actigraphy or consumer wearable devices. Services include:
- Study design and data collection using the SleepTank app, the Zulu watch, or a third-party actigraphy or consumer wearable
- Post-processing and data analysis of actigraphy or wearable data
- Device accuracy field evaluation
- One-step biomathematical modeling with SAFTE-FAST using sleep data from actigraphy or consumer wearables
- Device comparisons and selection consultation
For more information about purchasing or borrowing Zulu watch devices for research use
What device is right for you?
Here is a quick match-making quiz to see what kind of sleep tracking device may work best for your organization or yourself
- Study design and data collection using the Zulu watch, the SleepTank app, or third-party actigraphy or consumer wearables
- Post-processing and data analysis of actigraphy or wearable data
- Device accuracy field evaluation
- One-step biomathematical modeling with SAFTE-FAST using sleep data from actigraphy or consumer wearables
- Device comparisons and selection consultation