Pierrick Arnal, PhD: The Development and Utility of the Dreem Headband

“The concept came from the academic world. We really started in the lab, and we gathered a team with neuroscientists, physicians, engineers, and we developed this hardware.”

Several years ago, Dreem developed its headband device, designed to help the consumer monitor and improve their sleep via the data it collects by measuring brain activity and other signals during the night. Now, the device has been assessed to explore its clinical utility in sleep studies.

Notoriously a challenge in sleep medicine, the Dreem device has been lauded by some as a potential alternative method of conducting sleep studies. Easier than requiring visits to a sleep center and with much less equipment, the ambulatory wireless dry-electroencephalographic device does offer some advantages. Recently, the findings from a joint clinical study comparing the headband to the gold standard of polysomnography suggested that the Dreem device can monitor sleep-related physiological signals and process them into sleep stages accurately, paving the way for larger scale, longitudinal sleep studies.

To find out more about the development of the device and how it came to be, NeurologyLive spoke with study author Pierrick J. Arnal, PhD. The vice president of science and medical, at Dreem, Arnal offered insight into the inspiration for the device and its potential.

REFERENCES

Arnal PJ, Thorey V, Debellemaniere E, et al. The Dreem Headband compared to polysomnography for electroencephalographic signal acquisition and sleep staging. Sleep. zsaa097. doi: 10.1093/sleep/zsaa097.