Sapana Health

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), the intermittent cessation of breathing during sleep, affects roughly 22 million Americans. Untreated OSA is associated with serious comorbidities, including obesity, diabetes, stroke and heart disease. Despite its prevalence, as many as 80% of OSA cases remain undiagnosed. Because OSA indicators only manifest during sleep, many patients fail to notice symptoms and typically do not bring up concerns with their primary care physicians (PCPs). Even in patients who do express their concerns, inadequate consultation time and insufficient sleep health education among PCPs further exacerbates the issue of underdiagnosis. The current standard of screening is a questionnaire that requires patients to self-report on subjective metrics like quality of sleep; however, these questionnaires are unreliable because patients tend to overestimate quality and duration of sleep. Thus, health practitioners need an objective tool that can easily integrate into routine health checkups to screen patients for OSA. With that in mind, we created SomnoSnap, a handheld 3D-imaging screening tool that assesses patients’ likelihood of having OSA, and is intended for use during routine examinations at dental clinics. It uses structured light to generate a 3D scan of the patient’s upper oral airway. The scan will be evaluated according to a classification scheme known as the Mallampati scoring criteria, which correlates with the likelihood of upper airway collapse and serves as a predictor for OSA. Our solution also allows patients to visualize their oral cavity and their risk for OSA, thus motivating them to seek further diagnosis and treatment. By making SomnoSnap accessible at dental clinics, the diagnostic paradigm will shift from being patient-initiated to clinician-initiated, allowing the public to easily obtain sleep apnea screening.