Armenian SleepDoctor seeks to become first ever digital clinic for sleep disorders
Posted on March. 3. 2023
YEREVAN, ARMENPRESS. Successful serial entrepreneurs Tatul Ajamyan and Armen Verdian, known for developing companies like Wakie, Cellprothera, and Biofuture, launched a telemedicine platform in France called SleepDoctor designed to help people with diagnosing and treating sleep disorders.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), every second person in the world has a sleep disorder, and over 40% have insomnia. Common sleep disorders like insomnia, restless legs syndrome, narcolepsy and sleep apnea can severely hurt your quality of life. There are more than 80 different sleep disorders.
“Sleep is the most overlooked issue,” says Tatul Ajamyan. “We will solve all sleep-related issues, from diagnosis to treatment. SleepDoctor is a website where you read about sleeping, fill in a questionnaire and get a diagnosis and treatment options.”
The diagnosis of sleep apnea – a potentially serious sleep disorder in which breathing repeatedly stops and starts – takes a lot of time, but SleepDoctor offers a quick solution, all from the comfort of your home.
The two entrepreneurs came up with the idea of SleepDoctor after reading Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker.
“We realized that there’s no digital clinic for sleep disorders. We decided to create the first Phygital (physical and digital) platform. Sleep disorders are very common in the world, and 1 billion people have sleep apnea, but nearly 80% of them are undiagnosed. It takes somewhere from four to six months to get an apnea diagnosis in France, but SleepDoctor is doing it in two to three weeks, and we plan to bring this down to ten days,” Ajamyan said.
After filling in the questionnaire, SleepDoctor assesses your chances of having a sleep disorder, and if there is a high probability you talk to a doctor online. After that, the doctor gives you a device that you wear while sleeping. The SleepDoctor team will then take the device and you are left with one more teleconsultation with the doctor before your prescription and treatment.
SleepDoctor is now launched in the French cities of Paris, Bordeaux and Lyon, where approximately 55,000 people have already used the startup. The service is free in France.
SleepDoctor received investments from angel investors and two Armenian venture capital funds.
“I’ve developed various startups, this is my first healthcare-related one. These days you can solve any issue with various programs and technologies, but the healthcare sector is different. I was recently in India and I saw that there are several Armenian healthcare startups, and I’d like to encourage my friends and Armenian companies to work in this direction,” Ajamyan said.
The co-founder said that increasing the quality of life for people is their source of motivation and they want to become the first digital clinic for sleep disorders. The entrepreneurs plan to expand to other countries.