As a Biodesign Innovation Fellow, what was the need you set out to address?

We were seeking a better way to address night terrors in children to reduce parental concern and nights without night awakenings.

In general, the clinical community didn't think night terrors was a significant problem because they didn't see it a lot in their practice, and the condition resolves over time. So it was considered benign. But when you looked at the other stakeholders, particularly parents, they were having to deal with a child who woke up suddenly, crying and looking possessed, several nights each week, and often multiple times in a single night. This could go on for years on end, and that made it a compelling problem to go solve.

What key insight was most important to guiding the design of your solution?

At the need level, we were surprised by the number of people we talked to who either had direct experience with night terrors or knew someone affected by them, but had never thought about the condition as a problem that could be solved. We tried to reach a larger cross-section of these people by posting a survey on the Berkeley Parents Network and we got a huge response. A lot of parents reached out asking if they could enroll their child in a clinical study, which we interpreted as a sign that they were pretty motivated to get help.

“We were surprised by the number of people we talked to who … never thought about the condition as a problem that could be solved.”

With regard to deciding what direction to take with the technology, our greatest insight came from clinical literature that showed the effectiveness of scheduled awakenings in addressing night terrors. The studies had small sample sizes, but the outcomes were very good. All you had to do was wake up your child and keep him or her up for five minutes at a certain point in the sleep cycle. But that got us wondering if we could do the same thing without fully awakening the child. We talked with a number of clinicians at the Stanford Sleep Center and they believed that we might be able to achieve the same results through partial awakenings, which would be far less disruptive to the children and their parents.

How does your solution work?

Our system includes a vibration pod that goes under the child’s mattress and a smartphone app that provides an interface to the parents. The core idea is that we want to get ahead of the night terror pattern. So, what we do on a nightly basis is gather data from the parents about when the night terrors are happening relative to bedtime and fall-asleep time, the severity, and how many night terrors the child is having. All of that information goes into our algorithm to help us predict when to turn on the vibrations to interrupt the unhealthy sleep patterns that result in a night terror. The vibrations help the child transition to the next cycle of sleep and avoid the period of disturbed sleep.

Some families see results from day one. But because it's a behavioral therapy, we've built the product as a 28-day coaching program that gets the family through four weeks of use. Then we recommend that they continue until the night terrors have completely gone away or they’re happy with the reduction in nights with awakenings. If the night terrors come back, which can be triggered by stress, or jet lag, or sickness, then we recommend a one-to-two week refresher through the system.

At what stage of development is the solution?

The solution is currently available for sale through Amazon and other online retailers. And we’ve gotten a lot of great feedback about how it has helped families who have been dealing with night terrors. They tell us things like “The pain and sadness of watching my little guy crying, pacing his room, and [being] terrified is something I hope I never have to see again. And I'm pretty sure at this point I can say Lully is going to make that possible!”

It’s incredibly gratifying to hear directly from customers that “This simple device has stopped our night terrors. I could not be more grateful.”