This article is taken from the monthly magazine Sciences et Avenir n°949, dated March 2026.
Smartwatches, patches, or sensors to slip into bedding… Since 2020, a multitude of wearable connected devices have flooded the market, promising to detect and monitor sleep apnea for everyone. These devices fill a need for at-home medical monitoring of an underdiagnosed condition that affects more than 3 million people in France. The problem: waiting lists are long for polysomnography, the gold standard test, whose complex equipment necessitates hospitalization.
"The patient has electrodes on his head, next to the eyelids, leg sensors, sensors in front of the mouth, under the nose, on the finger to measure oxygen levels, around the chest “,” lists Dr. Justine Frija, a pulmonologist at Bichat Hospital in Paris. “Doctors certainly have some portable – and reimbursed – options for carrying out initial examinations at home, such as respiratory polygraphy, which has fewer sensors, or arterial pulse tonometry, which looks like a large sleeve connected to a device attached to the end of the finger, but they are not always suitable for the specific situations of patients, and not all professionals are equipped with them.”
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Connected devices that are redoubling their efforts to demonstrate their reliability
In this context, connected devices are redoubling their efforts to demonstrate their reliability in relation to the essential polysomnography. While they have all obtained CE marking, this does not guarantee that they have been evaluated using robust studies. Some, like the Withings Sleep Analyzer (which slips under the mattress) or the Sunrise (which sticks to the chin), have demonstrated good performance compared to polysomnography.
Sunrise. Placed on the chin, the 3G sensor analyzes sleep quality to provide a diagnosis. Credit: SUNRISE
"They must show at least 80 % concordance. If you want to track your apneas with them, why not, but their relevance in the patient pathway is currently low." “,” concludes Justine Frija. “And all these connected devices remain at the patient’s expense.” The pulmonologist is also coordinating the trial of the Apneal device, the first to rely solely on sensors already present in smartphones, requiring only the download of an application. Simply attaching your smartphone to your chest before sleeping demonstrates the correlation with polysomnography, exceeding 90 %.
Apneal. This application uses sensors from a smartphone worn on the chest (accelerometer, gyroscope). Credit: APNEAL
"The goal is not to replace polysomnography, but to have a complementary tool to quickly triage patients and make room for those who truly have sleep apnea." " explains Justine Frija.
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