Our first talk of 2025 will be presented by Prof Maia Angelova of the Aston Digital Futures Institute (ADFI), Aston University. It’ll take place at 7:30 at St Patricks Irish Club.

Insomnia is increasingly recognised as presenting a significant public health problem and has been associated with increased risk for a diverse range of health-related problems and reduced quality of life. While this condition affects more than one third of the adults in Western countries, it is underdiagnosed as individuals are unaware that their sleep is unhealthy. This justifies a pre-screening system for stratifying the risk of insomnia, however such a system does not exist yet.

Wearable devices provide non-invasive means for continuous monitoring of patients, which produce vast amounts of complex data, well suited for artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms and patient-centred care. Physical activity data have been used as complimentary means to improve accuracy of insomnia assessment and have shown potential for screening insomnia in the home environment.

In this talk, Maia will consider the potential of AI to classify acute and chronic insomnia from healthy sleep through the use of wearable data.