Sleep apnea care isn’t tailored for patients. Or at least not tailored enough.
That’s why researchers at MyApnea.Org want to hear from you. They want to learn more about your experiences getting diagnosed and treated so that sleep apnea care reflects your priorities and your needs.
Dr. Susan Redline (principal scientist for MyApnea.Org and sleep researcher at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital), just received a small grant for a research study to talk to patients about these important issues. The study will adopt a marketing research tool called ‘voice of the customer’. ‘Voice of the customer’ is a way to capture people’s views about a product and use the feedback to make the product more useful and appealing. In this project, the customer is sleep apnea patients, and the product we want to improve is your care.
How will the study work?
Step 1: Create a collaborative working group of 2 patients and 2 researchers to conduct the study. It is important that scientists work with patients on research so that the right questions are asked in the right way.
Step 2: Recruit sleep apnea patients from around the country (that’s you!) to participate in 1:1 interviews with trained staff researchers.
Step 3: Analyze the data. If you are interested in methods of scientific analysis, check out this article that we are modelling this work after.
Step 4: Share results with researchers, clinicians and patients on MyApnea.Org and beyond. We will use these results to inform a bigger project that further explores patient preferences and needs.
...Shape the future of sleep apnea care!
What to know if you are interested in participating:
You must be an adult (18+ years old) with diagnosed sleep apnea
You will be asked to participate in 1 interview
You will be compensated with a gift card
We will begin recruiting this winter. Check back in soon! If you have questions/ comments, leave them below!
"Microphone" by "lincolnblues" is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
