In recent years, sleep loss has become a critical issue, with far-reaching implications for human health and well-being. One in three Americans does not get enough sleep; globally, up to 45 percent of the population doesn’t. In the past few years, the rise of smart watches, fitness trackers, and other consumer wearables has made it possible to monitor sleep remotely at scale. The information from these devices is yielding insights that can be used to better understand sleep and find ways to counter sleep loss. Sleep tech is now a growing industry that is drawing new entrants, from start-ups to big tech companies, and attracting the interest of insurance companies, healthcare organizations, employers, and policy makers.
The costs of sleep loss
Sleep loss—particularly the loss of deep (or slow-wave) sleep—is linked to a long list of chronic health conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease, anxiety, dementia, depression, hypertension, and type 2 diabetes. It also affects cognitive function, attention, and decision making.
In addition to this detrimental effect on health, sleep deprivation carries high economic costs, estimated at $680 billion a year in five OECD countries—for example, $400 billion for the United States and $60 billion for Germany. Similarly, a study calculated that the direct and indirect cost of sleep disorders in Australia equals 1 percent of GDP.
Sleep-related absence from work is thought to account for the loss of ten million working hours a year in the United States, 4.8 million in Japan, and 1.7 million in Germany. Lost sleep also takes a toll on productivity: an analysis using data from US companies puts the annual cost at $1,300 to $3,000 per employee. And lost sleep not only impairs the performance of employees at work but also raises healthcare costs for employers.
(Excerpt from an article written by Djavan De Clercq, Nelly Papalambros, and Tobias Silberzahn for McKinsey and Company)
Courtesy: McKinsey and Company