An estimated 1 Billion people worldwide suffer from Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) and this number is growing. Many of these cases go undiagnosed, undertreated, or completely untreated. In the United States, only around 25% moderate to severe OSA cases have been diagnosed, which still represents about 6 million cases.
OSA causes partial or complete airway collapse during sleep, leading to frequent sleep disruptions and poor sleep quality. OSA affects daily and long term health with increased fatigue and significantly increased risk for conditions like heart failure, strokes, depression, and diabetes.
One of the limiting factors to diagnosing and treating OSA cases, is the inconvenient and uncomfortable process required. OSA management is based on technologies that have been around for more than 50 years, and despite their flaws, no newer technologies have been capable of replacing them for the majority of patients.
Sonosa is developing the next generation of OSA management tools, using ultrasound to both diagnose and treat OSA with revolutionary comfort and simplicity.
OSA is associated with not just the fatigue of sleep deprivation, but can lead to systemic medical conditions including neurological, psychological, cardiac, and metabolic diseases.
For example, patients with OSA have a high percentage of these conditions:
Nearly 1 Billion people suffer from OSA worldwide with an estimated 54 million in the United States alone. Current estimates suggest nearly 75% of moderate to severe OSA cases are undiagnosed, while only 40% of diagnosed patients are adequately treated with existing technologies.
| 938M | estimated cases of OSA worldwide. |
| 54M | estimated cases of OSA in the US. |
| 6M | diagnosed cases of OSA in the US. |
| ~60% | are non-compliant with recommended treatments. |
For the existing 6 Million OSA patients in the US, OSA costs over $12 Billion dollars every year to diagnose and treat; yet this only represents 14% of the true OSA population. The cost of untreated OSA exceeds $150 Billion per year in indirect costs such as associated medical conditions, fatigue related car accidents, and lost productivity.
Diagnosis: $1 Billion OSA Surgery: $5 Billion Standard Treatments: $6 Billion Economic Burden: $150 Billion
Sonosa is developing a wearable ultrasound system to fundamentally change how OSA treatments are managed. Without understanding the anatomy of obstructions for each individual patient, treatment efficacy can be inconsistent and selection of an optimal treatment can require multiple stages of trial and error. Sonosa's wearable ultrasound system can provide a direct visual of obstructions during normal sleep, so clinicians can select the right treatment the first time.
Sonosa is developing a wearable ultrasound system to fundamentally change how OSA treatments are managed. Without identifying an individual's OSA phenotype, treatment efficacy can be inconsistent and selection of an optimal treatment can require multiple stages of trial and error. Sonosa's wearable ultrasound system can provide a direct visual of obstructions during normal sleep, so clinicians can select the right treatment the first time.
Sonosa is at the cutting edge of research into ultrasound based therapeutics to bring a groundbreaking treatment for OSA that is comfortable, effective, and completely non-invasive.
