ARTICLE SUMMARY:
Greater comfort plus rivaling effectiveness equals better therapeutic adherence, according to this start-up’s philosophy.
SleepRes was founded by William Noah, MD, a board-certified sleep physician and owner of several sleep medicine practices in the Nashville, TN, area. Noah watched obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) patients struggle with adherence to positive airway pressure (PAP) therapy due to discomfort caused by excessive air pressure flowing into the nose and lungs. Continuous PAP (CPAP), the most well-known modality of the PAP paradigm, delivers a constant level of pressure, typically 10-15 cm H2O, prescribed by a sleep physician and calibrated by a durable medical equipment (DME) provider. Other variations such as bilevel PAP and technologies like expiratory pressure relief (EPR) modify CPAP machines to adjust airflow and reduce pressure delivered during the expiration phase so patients do not have to fight the current to breathe out.
