SOMNOLINK - Connected sleep data and decision support along the patient care pathway for better treatment of obstructive sleep apnea

Partner: Universitätsklinikum Göttingen, Universitätsmedizin Essen, Universitätsklinikum Regensburg, Universitätsmedizin Mannheim, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Universitätsmedizin Dresden, Ev. KH Göttingen- Weende gGmbH, Gesellschaft für Wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung mbH Göttingen

Project duration: 01/03/2024-29/02/2028

Methods:
Sustainability analysis

Summary:
Around 30% of men and 13% of women in Germany suffer from pathological snoring, known as obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). OSA, characterized by repeated interruptions in respiratory flow during sleep, can have serious consequences. Somnolink presents a vital initiative aiming to enhance the diagnosis, treatment, and adherence of obstructive sleep apnea.

The focus lies on early diagnosis, patient-centeredness, public awareness, data availability, and data sustainability.
Concrete steps include expanding the Medizininformatik-Initiative (MII) and Netzwerk Universitätsmedizin (NUM) infrastructure, enabling cross-sectoral use of sleep data, and integrating sleep medicine data into Data Integration Centers (DIZ) for AI-based diagnosis and decision support in research.

Our part in the project is the development of a sustainability plan. A key component of the project is the sustainable further development and improvement of the Somnolink technological solution and its long-term use in healthcare facilities at different levels of care. The project is characterized by a heterogeneous structure that includes health-related, information technology and economic aspects. In order to sustain the results achieved in the project and to integrate them into the healthcare infrastructure in the long term, a sustainability plan is necessary that harmonizes this heterogeneous structure. Therefore, we develop a sustainability concept and begin with that parallel to the start of the project.