Thanks for your comments @awichiu - much appreciated! From the image you posted, I was initially very excited to see that Firefly comparatively looked less user friendly and also seemed to require additional hardware to operate... However after further investigation, this simply doesn't seem to be the case.
Issue:
As @mpk1980 points out, the study you are referring to "Vision-Based Heart and Respiratory Rate Monitoring During Sleep – A Validation Study for the Population at Risk of Sleep Apnea" appears to be completely unrelated to the Firefly technology that ResMed is developing. The only reference in that article to "Firefly" i could find was to the "Firefly MV USB 2.0", which is actually referring to a specific camera type, not the Firefly technology (see below screenshot):
The journal article you quoted was also completed in Toronto and the authors of this study do not appear to be affiliated with ResMed.
Firefly technology - Screening for obstructive sleep apnea with novel hybrid acoustic smartphone app technology (ResMed)
From this recently published journal article, it is clear that Firefly sleep aponea tool is designed to operate in a similar way to SleepCheck (i.e. no custom hardware, additional add-ons, but rather through an app running on a smartphone).
On these terms, it seems that Firefly would be comparable to our SleepCheck product in terms of ease of useability and hardware requirements (i cant comment on price). I make these comments by reference to the following extracts from the journal article:
"This patent pending “Firefly” technology does not require any custom hardware, and is compatible with a wide range of current and future smartphones, with additional potential applications in tablets, smart TVs, smart speakers and autonomous vehicles (34-36)."
"A typical use case is as follows. The user installs the app on their Android or Apple phone from an app store. No other equipment is required, and no phone modification is needed; i.e., the user just needs to have the app installed on a regular smartphone. The phone is placed on a bedside table. It is recommended that the phone is placed above the mattress height, at about an arm’s length away from the person, and with the charger port pointed towards the chest (which is the area where the speaker and mic are located in modern phones). The app is started at the beginning of the night, automatically commences data processing, and is stopped at the end of the night (or stops automatically)—see Figures 1,2. If the user picks up or interacts with the phone (based on processing of gyroscope, accelerometer, charging status, and user interface (UI) touches), the sensing is paused for the duration of the interaction. In addition, if the smartphone is connected to an external Bluetooth speaker or ear buds, the sensing is paused."
I've also extracted below a diagram of the authors' depiction of how Firefly tech works (i.e. no IR light or cameras are required)
Outcome:
Unfortunately I feel like I'm pouring cold water onto the fire a bit.. Nevertheless, I think your arguments regarding Sleepcheck "being cheaper, more accessible, easier to set up, and therefore more marketable and appealing to the broad population", remains true in respect of the current competitive landscape / commercialised products. I also think that the Firefly tech has quite a way to go before it can be regulatory approved and rolled out. Per my comments above, I would expect the Firefly tech would need to be properly evaluated in an at-home testing, prospective studies to be completed and additional number of patients tested to improve the statistical power of the results.
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Thanks for your comments @awichiu - much appreciated! From the...
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