Can SleepyHead Be Trusted?

[Lambsydoats]

Today the PA said he "doesn't put any stock in" any software not produced by the CPAP manufacturer (ResMed in my case).

Isn't the data on the SD card the data on the SD card? How could one application (SleepyHead) report the results erroneously and the other (ResScan) report them accurately when the data being imported is from the same ... everything (i.e., CPAP machine, SD card)?

I've been using SH (for all 9 days that I've had my CPAP) and just downloaded ResScan. I REALLY like the SH interface, reporting, etc. But hey--if it isn't accurate, I'll get used to ResScan.

Lamb

[saltydawg2]

I use a resmed s9, and use both softwares, on a daily basis. The limited info I get from rescan is pretty close to the same info using Sleepyhead. It is the detail that Sleepyhead offers that I appreciate. Is your dr. willing to give you a copy of the data charts he, or she is using? If so, you can compare them. Dr. is probably using software more detailed than the Rescan program you have.

[retired_guy]

In my experience Sleepyhead is just as accurate as ReScan. The data is on the card, all the software is doing is displaying it.

Your PA is functioning from a well known phenomenon called "illiteracy syndrome." It used to be called "Stupidity Syndrome," but someone invented a pill for that. Sadly, the government was only able to fund one of them. .......and it was delicious.

[archangle]

SleepyHead can make mistakes. There have been some bugs. Usually, it's pretty obvious.

ResScan can make mistakes, too.

Get both. If something looks hinky or confusing in SH, check ResScan, and vice versa.

Realize you're not usually betting your life on SleepyHead. Most users and most doctors don't bother to look at the data at all. Many doctors don't even bother to prescribe data capable CPAP machines.

[Slick7533]

I can't yet answer the question of "Is Sleepyhead accurate?" I just got my first machine 2 weeks ago and found Sleepyhead a few days later so I'm just starting to build my analysis from an engineer's viewpoint.

I agree with the comment that "the data is the data." Sleepyhead simply hashes the data and displays it in a very straightforward and detailed way - which I believe gives each of us a true breath-by-breath look at our sleep cycles. No doubt Sleepyhead uses some assumptions and algorithms in the processing of the data captured from the cards. Are those assumptions and algorithms absolutely spot on accurate?....probably not. But what they are is a very close approximation that does truly show the relationship of the data sets. I think you CAN trust the graphical relationships of the data if not the exact numbers for each of the characteristics that the software displays.

I have seen much more favorable user comments from the Sleepyhead set than from the Respironics ap users. I totally believe that the manufacturer does not want us to know too much....it makes their product more mysterious and therefore more expensive and higher profit for them. I think it's similar to the hearing aid industry.

So far I think Sleepyhead is a GREAT piece of work. I shared it with my doc (who is a very cool one-man-office guy MD and PHD genuinely interested in helping his patients get better) and he was very excited to learn about it - he thought it was a great tool and had no skeptical reaction.

Bottom line....yeah...it's a great question to ask and I have a tiny grain of salt in place with Sleepyhead but frankly I'm pretty sure it gives us a more objective and detailed look at our sleep breathing.

I'm anxious to hear what others think!

All the Best!

[Ghost1958]

I run both Sleepyhead and Encore. Sleepyhead has said my auto machine is a bipap three times while Encore didnt. But other than that the numbers are pretty much the same.

SH does on occasion fail to display waveform for part of that graph while still displaying pressure and other graphs entirely thru the same time frame. Encore has never done that.

[DeepBreathing]

In my experience, SH reports accurately, the same as ResScan. Where it sometimes fails is in the presentation of graphs, with scaling errors and so forth. These are obvious at a glance, and seem to be a lot better in the later versions of the software.

I took a bunch of SH printouts along to my last appointment and the therapist was very impressed. I agree with retired_guy - your bloke is talking from a position of ignorance.

[PaulaO2]

I used SH and ResScan together for a while.

Ignoring the graphs, the numbers were the same. ResScan tended to follow what the machine said which could be confusing for me. I am a night owl with insomnia so my sleeping hours quite often crossed the noon threshold. So a single sleep session for me would be spread out over two days and not in one, making viewing the data difficult. At least I think that is what was happening. But SH is able to see it was an uninterrupted session and put it all into one, which I liked.

SH sometimes would mark events incorrectly but after a while, I could see what had happened. Not that it was saying an OA event was a CA event, but more like it was saying an event happened and it didn't. But it was the time stamp that was off. If I needed to zoom in on an event and it wasn't there, I could just scroll to one side or the other and find it. To me, that was no big deal. At least I understood what I was looking at. I never even got that far with ResScan. I never even figured out how to zoom in! (granted, I wasn't all that interested in learning how)

But inferior as in reporting incorrectly? No. It is using the same data. And other than being a few 0.x off between them, I never noticed a difference.

[DeepBreathing]

But inferior as in reporting incorrectly? No. It is using the same data. And other than being a few 0.x off between them, I never noticed a difference.

ResScan rounds the values to the nearest whole number while SH reports to one decimal place (eg SH might report 8.6 but ResScan rounds it to 9).

[plasticplumber]

I know that from the software engineers I have come across jedimark is in the top bunch and if you think its not trusted I hope you don't trust windows or other operating systems either.
Sleepyhead may still have a few bugs, but it is what it says on the can "beta" software and I would rather have it now than later and prefer it any day over the so called proprietary software.
It reports what the machine sees in a way that we can interpret and no interpretation should be made on one days data even if they try to do that in asleep lab. With a collection of data you can see the trends or spot a glitch and thats the way to go about our treatment