At CES 2023, we had the opportunity to interview Paul Lee, the Chief Global Business Officer at Sleep. The company is based in South Korea and is on a mission to improve sleep tracking in a more convenient way than what we are used to.
Mr. Lee explained in detail how his solution differs from his competitors, why it is important to work with different smart home products and more. You can read a synopsis of the interview below, or watch the whole thing in the video above.
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Q: Can you tell me a little more about the company and what it wants to achieve?
A: Sleep is a company that wants to improve the way people sleep in a comfortable way. And in our opinion, the most convenient way is to use only the help of a smartphone. So you don’t have to wear a sleep watch or a similar product to monitor it, because it’s very uncomfortable.
Using a smartphone is also convenient because nowadays 80 percent of people own one, so you don’t have to buy any product. We track users’ sleep patterns using the phone’s voice. This allows us to measure things like sleep apnea, snoring and more.
Q: In your solution, you shouldn’t wear a smartwatch and you shouldn’t wear anything on your chest or head. So the software is using the microphone from your smartphone?
Hadlee Simons / Android Authority
A: Yes, that is correct. All you have to do is put the smartphone in the bedroom or close to the sleeping person and it can pick up the sounds. Our AI model was trained on data we recently processed from one of the top hospitals in Korea – the National University Hospital.
Interestingly, doctors in hospitals strap up to 20 monitors on a patient to monitor their sleep patterns, but with our solution, you only need a smartphone nearby. What’s amazing is that our sleep trackers are better than Fitbit, Garmin and many other big companies in this space.
Q: Your solution also works with various smart home products. Could you please tell us a little more about this?
Ryan Haines / Android Authority
A: We need to do two things to improve people’s sleep. The first is to change human behavior, which we can do with the information that our solution collects, and the second is to change the environment in which people sleep. This is where the connection with modern home products comes in.
Sleep has partnered with LG Electronics.
We’ve partnered with LG Electronics, and our API works with their smart products to create a better sleep environment. So, for example, it automatically turns off the lights, the AC sets the right temperature for sleeping, and even controls the air filter to improve the air quality in the bedroom. All you have to do to do this task is keep your smartphone next to your bed.
Q: Do you manufacture any hardware or just focus on software?
Caitlin Cimino / Android Authority
A: No, we do not manufacture any hardware. We only make software. Our SleepTrack API collects data, and we can partner with other companies like Samsung, for example, who can use that data to make their products like air conditioners and air purifiers better.
Q: What exactly are you doing at CES? What are you trying to achieve here?
Ryan Haines / Android Authority
A: Our goal is to partner with the largest companies in the technology industry, such as Google and Amazon. But we have partnered with other companies like cosmetics.
We’ve had success here at CES as we’re talking to over 10 companies from different sectors who are trying to use our technology. We are also talking with NASA about how to improve sleep for astronauts in space.
We will definitely be back at CES next year and plan to expand our booth to show people the sleep environment we already have.
This is a quick overview of our conversation with Paul Lee from Sleep. If you want to learn more, watch the video at the top of the page.