An AI-integrated sleep ring : A big leap in paediatric dentistry that throws light on the mouth-sleep connection

A sleep ring? That’s a conversation starter with Dr Shifa Shamsudeen, preventive paediatric and sleep dentist as she rings in a month-long celebrations on sleep awareness. She has launched an upgraded sleep passport 2.0, a booklet for parents and children with pointers for a healthy sleep routine from infancy to 18 years. It provides pictorial description of low quality sleep, and highlights the symptoms, causes, and effects of mouth breathing and sleep disordered breathing (SDB), an upper airway dysfunction and throws light on the AI integrated Belun sleep ring. “The ring is a big leap in sleep diagnosis. Earlier, the screening was invasive with all wires or big machines attached. Now, AI does this for us,” says Shifa, founder of We Little, a paediatric dental clinic in Coimbatore. While the ring measures oxygen levels, pulse, movements and other signals while the child is asleep, it helps to understand if the sleep is healthy or there are signs like snoring, sleep apnea or simply poor-quality sleep. “Dr Umakanth Katwa, pediatric sleep specialist, and faculty at Harvard Medical School evaluates the data and gives us a report every week,“ she explains adding that the sleep passport is an educational guide where children can also journal.

Reflecting on her 14 year journey, her message is that many problems with the mouth that result in poor sleep can be prevented. They can also be solved early, with myofunctional therapy. “This involves breath, muscle and sleep re-training exercises,” she says. An example is to place the tongue behind the upper front teeth without touching the teeth for 10 seconds. “I actively got into sleep education from 2018.We have grown from one centre in Coimbatore to eight centres across seven cities.”