Before the Covid-19 pandemic, potential sleep apnea patients were usually tested in an overnight facility, where their conditions were monitored and recorded, all overseen by a small team of medical professionals. They were asked to spend the night sleeping in a bed unfamiliar to them, in a noisy room surrounded with monitors and equipment, all while staff checked in on them throughout the duration of the test. It wasn’t perfect, but you could at least get an idea of what your patient was dealing with as they slept.
Now, with the pandemic continuing to affect everyone in one way or another, your patients are faced with far fewer options than in the past. Most, if not all testing facilities and clinics have severely cut back operations or have been forced to close outright. These facilities will need to make considerable changes to operations in order to open again and even then, most will likely choose to close at least in the short-term due to litigation concerns, insurance costs, and potentially higher levels of regulation and oversight. The road will be rough for many of these facilities, with many shutting their doors permanently.
Home as the New Diagnostic Center
No matter what happens, your patients will still need you to diagnose and treat their sleep disorders. The question becomes – how can you do it safely and effectively? The need for a new solution to both monitor and detect sleep apnea conditions in safe, familiar environment has never been greater. Your patients are looking to you for help. And up until now, a simple, effective, one-time use device that they can use in their own home while sleeping in their own bed did not exist.
Introducing the WatchPAT® ONE, the world’s first and only disposable HSAT from Itamar® Medical. This innovative, FDA-cleared wrist mounted device was created to diagnose Sleep Breathing Disorders (SBD) in the comfort of the patient’s own home. The WatchPAT®️ has been clinically validated against the “Gold Standard”, polysomnography (PSG), with a documented correlation of up to 89%.1 Its simple design is both comfortable easy to use for outstanding patient compliance. It is clinically reliable, with 98% success rate.2 It measures “True Sleep Time” for the most accurate AHI, RDI, ODI and delivers:
* Complete sleep architecture for a comprehensive diagnosis
* Increased infection control with single-use design
* Scalable, cost effective solution for high volume workflow
* Automatically generated reports for fast diagnosis and treatment turnaround
* zzPAT -software with an advanced automatic algorithm for scoring of respiratory events
* CloudPAT-cloud based IT solution for convenient sleep diagnosis and secure patient data transfer
In a post-COVID world, ensuring patients can receive the diagnostic testing they need in the safety and comfort of their own home simply makes sense. Reach out today and talk to your Itamar representative about how to optimize sleep management in your practice.
1.Yalamanchali et al. JAMA Otolaryngnol Head Neck Surg, 2013, Diagnosis of Obstructive Sleep Apnea by Peripheral Arterial Tonometry (Meta-Analysis)
2. Data on file