What if sleep were a controllable biological system—one we could measure, personalize, and optimize to improve health?

The Problem

• Nearly half of Americans struggle with poor sleep, and approximately 86 million adults experience insomnia.
• Poor sleep is associated with increased risk for depression, dementia, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and other chronic conditions, contributing to an estimated $400 billion annual economic burden.
• Despite decades of sleep research, we can still only measure how much people sleep, not whether their sleep is helping them stay healthy.
• Today's sleep metrics focus primarily on broad measures such as duration, timing, and sleep stages. 
• As a result, current treatments for poor sleep and insomnia fail for more than 70% of those struggling to get rest.

The Solutions

• The REST (Restorative and health-Enhancing Sleep Time) program will advance two technical areas: 1) measure and diagnose sleep quality at home with clinical fidelity and 2) control and treat sleep problems by developing non-invasive, closed-loop systems with real-time interventions throughout the night.
• Together, these components are intended to: 
  • Define sleep quality by identifying the physiological features of sleep that predict meaningful health outcomes. 
  • Measure those features accurately in home environments rather than only in specialized sleep laboratories. 
  • Control sleep quality in real time through adaptive, personalized interventions that respond to an individual's physiology throughout the night.
• If successful, REST could redefine sleep quality using health outcomes as the ground truth, enable clinically meaningful sleep assessment in the home, and create adaptive technologies that improve sleep in real time.

Only ARPA-H can...

• Bring together the full spectrum of capabilities needed to tackle this challenge, uniting experts across disciplines, institutions, and industry sectors around a common goal.
• Integrate discovery science, advanced sensing, machine learning, diagnostics, and intervention technologies into a unified system to redefine sleep quality using health outcomes as the ground truth.
• Create adaptive technologies that improve sleep in real time and enable clinically meaningful sleep assessment in the home.