Sleep Self-Screening Is Just an App Away (Podcast)

A sufficient amount of restful sleep is crucial to good health and wellbeing, yet sleep can often be a forgotten factor when patients and clinicians are together in the exam room.

“Sleep, diet and exercise are three critical components of health and wellness,” says Nancy Foldvary-Schaefer, DO, MS, a specialist in Cleveland Clinic’s Sleep Disorders and Epilepsy centers. “When you have two but not the third, it's just not optimal. We spend billions of dollars a year in the United States on diet and exercise. How much do we invest in our own sleep? Relatively much less.”

That’s why Foldvary-Schaefer is passionate about raising the profile of sleep health and elevating awareness about sleep disorders that pose significant health risks. On the latest episode of the Neuro Pathways Podcast, she discusses Sleep by Cleveland Clinic, a mobile app that lets users screen themselves for common sleep disorders and alerts them to factors that might warrant follow-up with their doctors.

Dr. Foldvary-Schaefer explains the purpose of the app, which is not a diagnostic tool but can facilitate conversations between clinicians and patients. She also details the verified screening instruments embedded in the app:

• The Cleveland Clinic Sleep Apnea Probability Score
• The Insomnia Severity Index
• The Shift Work Disorder Screening Questionnaire
• A variety of questions to estimate total sleep time

Click the podcast player above to listen to the 25-minute episode now, or read on for a short, edited excerpt.

Check out more Neuro Pathways episodes at
clevelandclinic.org/neuropodcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

This activity has been approved for AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™ and ANCC contact hours. After listening to the podcast, you can claim your credit here.

Podcast excerpt

Podcast host Glen Stevens, DO, PhD: Can you share a little background on the app, how this was developed and why it was developed?

Nancy Foldvary-Schaefer, DO, MS: We created the app in partnership with a woman who donated resources to support it. Her husband died in his sleep … and is believed to be the first person in the United States with sleep apnea as the cause of death on his death certificate. And so she became very passionate about the fact that these disorders, specifically sleep apnea but others too, are very common, and that sleep doctors are not available everywhere. People in some parts of the country are waiting weeks if not months to get into a sleep lab.

So we created this app to screen for the four most common sleep problems in adults, and to help people screen themselves and perhaps share that information with their healthcare provider, who might not have been trained to treat sleep disorders or even screen for sleep disorders.

Dr. Stevens: If I download the app and I go through it, how long does it take me to complete?

Dr. Foldvary-Schaefer: It's probably about 10 minutes. There is optional medical history [users may add], but this does not impact risk scores. Cleveland Clinic MyChart users can opt in to have their scores saved in their medical record. Providers can view these scores using the dotphrase “.sleepapp” when charting, which can save time screening in an office visit.