Keep people healthy with our preventive healthcare data

Belun’s CEO, Dr. Lydia Leung, shared: “we hope to facilitate home sleep tests for identifying undiagnosed OSA. Research shows sleep health is critical for the overall immune system & treatment effectiveness of chronic diseases.” The company is expanding towards Preventive Healthcare from the original sleep health. The new direction is an insight found from collaborating with worldwide specialists. Since the launch of our 1st generation Belun Ring in 2018, it has been gradually adopted in other research on long-term diseases, including stroke, hypertension, insomnia, dementia, etc.

“Our new company direction results from the co-created insights after collaborating with worldwide researchers. Sleep takes up so much human time, but we know little about it. Our vision is to keep people healthy with our preventive healthcare data.”

Lydia Leung, CEO of Belun Technology

Worldwide obesity epidemic & the aging population

The sedentary lifestyle of people has led to an increasing prevalence of cardiovascular disease, poor sleep patterns, evaluated stress & obesity. OSA is common in patients with high BMI. Therefore, the worldwide obesity epidemic and the aging population demographic will likely contribute to the rising global prevalence of OSA. According to the World Economic Forum, 1 in 3 adults worldwide will suffer from 2 or more chronic conditions, leading to annual healthcare costs with an 80-300% increment². World Health Organization estimates a projected 10 million health workers shortfall by 2030³. Researchers predicted demand for healthcare workers will increase to 80 million by 2030, but supply will only reach 65 million, creating a healthcare worker deficit of 15 million. The anticipated shortage requires some immediate actions, or access to primary healthcare would be at risk. 

PPG-based wearable with medical accuracy

Belun’s CEO, Lydia Leung, shared: “Belun® Ring is a user and environmentally friendly PPG-based wearable with medical accuracy. Belun will offer a superb convenient option that may bring disruption to the sleep health market & encourage suspected patients to take action and kick start their treatment journey.” According to AASM⁴, “ubiquitous availability of PPG technology may allow for OSA diagnosis at scale.” There is “an increased interest in new technologies with therapeutic potential.”

Chronic Disease Management via AI Preventive Healthcare

Belun’s vision is to help people better manage their chronic diseases through artificial intelligence and big data analytics to alleviate medical expenditures due to the aging population. Our solution allows caregivers and patients to follow their treatment effectiveness, select personalized solutions, and enhance treatment compliance. Lydia further shared: “Long-term monitoring using medical-grade wearables can help people to identify abnormalities earlier to achieve preventive healthcare.” 

Worldwide partnership for the OSA markets

To cope with the massive market, Belun has teamed up with global partners to customize solutions for local communities in different countries. Some sleep lab groups in the United States will launch the Belun Sleep System to cater to both the OSA & insomnia markets. For the Indian market, Belun will collaborate with renowned neurologists & sleep specialists to tap into the millions of untreated OSA. The two markets have 104 million suspected OSA, according to the Lancet report¹.

Partnering with Belun :

Up to now, over a hundred organizations, including HK hospital authority hospitals, medical groups, clinic groups, dentists, and elderly centers selected to use the Belun Sleep System, Belun® Ring and Sleep App, and Belun® remoVital monitoring system. Many doctors read our medical journal papers, including 1) “Belun® Ring Platform: a novel home sleep apnea testing system for assessment of obstructive sleep apnea” (https://jcsm.aasm.org/doi/10.5664/jcsm.8592) and 2) “Detection of obstructive sleep apnea using Belun Sleep Platform wearable with neural network based algorithm and its combined use with STOP-Bang questionnaire” (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0258040).

If you would like to know more about how to adopt Belun’s solution in your organization or home use, please feel free to contact us to schedule a meeting by filling out the form below:

References

1.A.V, Benjafield et al, Lancet Respiratory Medicine, 2019; 2. Susanna Ng et al, PLOS One, 2015

2. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/12/healthcare-future-multiple-chronic-disease-ncd/

3. https://www.who.int/news/item/02-06-2022-global-strategy-on-human-resources-for-health–workforce-2030

4. https://aasm.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Tech-Committee-Report.pdf

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Belun joined the conference, “7th International Sleep Update 2023,” held in New Delhi, India, on Feb 12^th and 13th, organized by the Neurology Sleep Centre, New Delhi. The event composed of a 2-days conference on the topic “Innovative Approach to Sleep Disorders” cum exhibition.

Belun representatives showed the Belun Sleep System, Belun® Ring, and Sleep App for the first time in a public event in India. We had many insightful discussions with industry leaders.

Photo credit: Sumeet Sethi

Continued Reading :

Partnering with Belun :

Up to now, over 32 organizations, including HK hospital authority, medical groups, clinic groups, dentists, and elderly centers selected to use the Belun Sleep System, Belun® Ring and Sleep App, and Belun® remoVital monitoring system. Many doctors read our medical journal papers, including 1) “Belun® Ring Platform: a novel home sleep apnea testing system for assessment of obstructive sleep apnea” (https://jcsm.aasm.org/doi/10.5664/jcsm.8592) and 2) “Detection of obstructive sleep apnea using Belun Sleep Platform wearable with neural network based algorithm and its combined use with STOP-Bang questionnaire” (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0258040). If you would like to know more about how to adopt Belun’s solution in your organization or home use, pls feel free to contact us to schedule a meeting by filling in the form below:

DM us if you are a potential partner!

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Convenience is what we need nowadays. Technology can bring treatment accessibility to the mass, which we see as a way out for our worldwide ageing population and long-term chronic disease management. OSA is highly related to many of them. It also significantly saves government healthcare expenditures if we adopt preventive healthcare now. Belun embarks on this new company direction in “Preventive Healthcare Solutions” based on the health fingerprints collected in our six-year journey, which become a solid foundation of our AI algorithms.

The AI would predict risk to warn the individuals when detecting abnormalities before the situation worsens, thus minimizing health risk. In addition, Belun creates medical-grade wearables & solutions for screening sleep health, evaluating treatment effectiveness for chronic disease patients & predict health risks.

Do Wearables and AI shed light on OSA and sleep architecture?

Wearables have become more and more popular in sleep monitoring. Consumer utilization of sleep devices and apps is soaring. Combining the physiological data acquired by medical-grade wearables during sleep and AI, screening OSA at home has become feasible. Compared with manually scored polysomnography, the gold standard for diagnosing OSA, the award-winning Belun® Ring’s accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of the apnea-hyponea index (AHI) and sleep stages from clinically validated technologies is as high as 85%.

Award-winning Belun® Ring is an FDA 510(k) cleared Class II device that uncovers sleep architecture. For the individual consumer, we provide health trends shown in the mobile apps that offer knowledge about personalized sleep stages, empowering the individual to self-manage health by improving habits that make their rest more productive, which means better recovery. See our products and services.

Growing interest among the dental community in OSA screening 

Since the American Dental Association issued a policy statement that addressed the dentist’s role in assessing patients’ risk for sleep-related breathing disorders in 2017, we see growing interest from the dental community in exploring OSA screening in their practices with Belun® Ring. In addition, we have programmes to cater to the dental practice; contact us for more information. (email to Jay) Recent youtube program with dentist in Hong Kong sharing how Belun® Ring help expand their practice to sleep health, thus retaining clients with more personalized services  (photo of Dentist / Doctor assessing patient) 

FDA-cleared Belun Ring &  clinically-validated AI sleep platform

Belun provides Sleep Test services through an evidence-based Sleep Health Platform. Our machine learning analysis has generated over 15,000+ sleep reports from 160M+ data segments worldwide. Moreover, it is a comfortable measurement with an FDA approved, small, lightweight, cableless, and ergonomically designed ring. It is a cost-effective test  conducted at home for multiple nights and without the hassles of staying in the hospital sleep lab overnight (usually only one night). With the proprietary AI algorithm for sleep analysis, it is fast and accurate with high sensitivity (0.85) and specificity (0.87) of Belun Ring-AHI (bAHI)≥ 15 in predicting PSG-AHI≥ 15 as well as significant correlations with PSG in both total sleep time (TST) and AHI. 

Belun has jointly published two medical journal papers in 2019-2021, including 1) “Belun Ring Platform: a novel home sleep apnea testing system for assessment of obstructive sleep apnea” (https://jcsm.aasm.org/doi/10.5664/jcsm.8592) and 2) “Detection of obstructive sleep apnea using Belun Sleep Platform wearable with neural network based algorithm and its combined use with STOP Bang questionnaire” (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0258040).

Global research collaborations contributing to big data of chronic disease management

Belun is currently in collaborations with different universities studying the relationship of OSA with multiple chronic diseases such as stroke, hypertension, dementia, cardiovascular disease… If you are in a similar research area, please get in touch with us to co-create the history of chronic disease management.

Partnering with Belun

Up to now, over 32 organizations partners including HK hospital authority hospitals, medial groups, clinic groups, dentists and elderly centres selected to use Belun Sleep health platform, Belun Ring and Sleep App and Belun remoVital monitoring system. Many doctors read our medical journal papers including: 1) “Belun Ring Platform: a novel home sleep apnea testing system for assessment of obstructive sleep apnea” (https://jcsm.aasm.org/doi/10.5664/jcsm.8592) and 2) “Detection of obstructive sleep apnea using Belun Sleep Platform wearable with neural network based algorithm and its combined use with STOP Bang questionnaire” (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0258040). If you would like to know more about how to adopt Belun’s solution in your organization or home use, pls feel free to contact us to schedule a meeting by filling the form below:

References

1. Kwon S, Kim H, Yeo WH. Recent advances in wearable sensors and portable electronics for sleep monitoring. iScience. 2021 Apr 21;24(5):102461. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2021.102461.
2. de Zambotti M, Cellini N, Menghini L, Sarlo M, Baker FC. Sensors Capabilities, Performance, and Use of Consumer Sleep Technology. Sleep Med Clin. 2020 Mar;15(1):1-30. doi: 10.1016/j.jsmc.2019.11.003. Epub 2020 Jan 3.
3. Perez-Pozuelo I, Zhai B, Palotti J, Mall R, Aupetit M, Garcia-Gomez JM, Taheri S, Guan Y, Fernandez-Luque L. The future of sleep health: a data-driven revolution in sleep science and medicine. NPJ Digit Med. 2020 Mar 23;3:42. doi: 10.1038/s41746-020-0244-4.
4. Yetisen AK, Martinez-Hurtado JL, Ünal B, Khademhosseini A, Butt H. Wearables in Medicine. Adv Mater. 2018 Jun 11;30(33):e1706910. doi: 10.1002/adma.201706910.
5. Gu W, Leung L, Kwok KC, Wu IC, Folz RJ, Chiang AA. Belun Ring Platform: a novel home sleep apnea testing system for assessment of obstructive sleep apnea. J Clin Sleep Med. 2020 Sep 15;16(9):1611-1617. doi: 10.5664/jcsm.8592.
6. Jeremy R. Tietjens, David Claman, Eric J. Kezirian, Teresa De Marco, Armen Mirzayan, Bijan Sadroonri, Andrew N. Goldberg, Carlin Long, Edward P. Gerstenfeld and Yerem Yeghiazarians, Obstructive Sleep Apnea in Cardiovascular Disease: A Review of the Literature and Proposed Multidisciplinary Clinical Management Strategy. J American Heart Asso. 2019 Jan 8. 8(1). org/10.1161/JAHA.118.010440.
7. Night-to-night variability in obstructive sleep apnea using peripheral arterial tonometry: a case for multiple night testing. J ClinSleep Med. 2021 Sep 1; 17(9): 1751-1758. org/10.5664/jcsm.9300
8. The Healthy Sleep Project addresses the sleep health focus area of Healthy People 2020, which provides science-based, 10-year national objectives for improving the health of all Americans. The sleep health objectives are to increase the medical evaluation of people with symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea, reduce vehicular crashes due to drowsy driving and ensure more Americans get sufficient sleep. For more information, visit projecthealthysleep.org. 
9. https://aasm.org/rising-prevalence-of-sleep-apnea-in-u-s-threatens-public-health/
10. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(19)30198-5/fulltext

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