Developed by Dr Manuel Schabus, head of the Sleep, Cognition and Consciousness Research Laboratory at the Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience at Salzburg in Austria, and his team. The science team of Nukkuaa deals with the topic of sleep and solutions to solving sleep problems on a daily basis.
Do you wish to precisely analyze your sleep as often as you want, improve it with sleep training, and wake up refreshed in the morning? Then: welcome to the virtual sleep lab for your home. Nukkuaa – developed by professionals in sleep research – offers exactly this. Data show an 18 percent improvement in sleep quality among people with poor or very poor sleep quality when using Nukkuaa over a six-week period. In addition to acutely reducing insomnia symptoms, these effects have been shown to last week’s beyond use of the app. It shows a 26 percent improvement in what is known as sleep onset latency: that is the time it takes to detect the first stage of sleep.
Digital sleep training improves sleep and helps improve mental, emotional and social health, according to studies. Studies already conducted on the efficacy of Nukkuaa show: Problems falling and staying asleep improve, and the perceived quality of life increases.
Put on your chest sensor (a Polar H10 chest strap supported for now, with the arm-based one to follow soon), go to sleep: Nukkuaa’s artificial intelligence-based algorithm calculates sleep stages based on heart rate variability – and is almost as accurate as a regular sleep lab, where much more body data is measured. Also new: the combination of sleep analysis and sleep training based on current research findings.
Some caveats though:
- The app itself appears to be limited to some markets (e.g. I could not download it from the US Play Store). In the end, I downloaded the APK file from ApkGK.
- The app appears to only be in German for now (as at the January 2023 version that I have, but most recent update is May 2023).
- Right now, it only works with the Polar H10 chest strap. It seems support for the Polar arm band will follow, and possibly from other devices. But it requires an accurate ECG based reader. Remember, this is essentially sleep laboratory analysis being made possible at home.
- There is a free tier, but the more advanced analysis will require a monthly subscription.
I see that The Quantified Scientist channel on YouTube is planning to review the app soon.