Delivering clinical guideline care for insomnia: The potential of digital therapeutics to close the treatment gap
Colin Espie, PhD (United Kingdom)
Professor of Sleep Medicine, Clinical Director Experimental & Clinical Sleep Medicine Programme, Sleep & Circadian Neurosciences Institute
University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Keynote Summary: Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is the guideline treatment of first choice for chronic insomnia, yet it is available to only a very small fraction of those who might benefit from it. As a result, pharmacotherapy, regarded as a less effective, second line intervention, continues to fill the insomnia treatment void. However, the emergence of fully automated digital CBT provides the opportunity to completely close this gap. As part of a stepped care model of service provision, digital therapeutics may result in clinical guideline care becoming the norm in routine practice.
Biosketch: Colin is the Professor of Sleep Medicine at the University of Oxford where he is Director of the Experimental & Clinical Sleep Medicine research programme and Clinical Director of the Sleep & Circadian Neurosciences Institute (https://www.ndcn.ox.ac.uk/team/colin-espie). He is also an Emeritus Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Glasgow. He is internationally known for his work on insomnia and its treatment, using cognitive behavioural therapeutics (CBTx). He has published over 300 scientific papers and several textbooks. He is Deputy Editor of Journal of Sleep Research, serves on the editorial board of Sleep Medicine Reviews, and was awarded Honorary Fellow of the BABCP (British Association for Behavioural & Cognitive Psychotherapies) in 2015, and the Mary A. Carskadon Outstanding Educator Award by the Sleep Research Society in 2017. He is actively involved in print, TV and social media regarding the science of sleep (twitter.com/ProfEspie). He also co-founded https://www.bighealth.com/ the developer of SleepioTM which is now widely available in the NHS-UK and in the US healthcare system.