Apparently, there’s big money to be had in supplying the sleep research industry. Our friend Margaret Maher, modeling a Compumedics sleep diagnostic system, shows us the great heights the industry has risen to. Who are we kidding? They really expect someone to fall asleep wearing that? That setup could make the Borg jealous. While we’re at it, Compumedics has a very mid-80’s giant beige computer with a green screen ring to it.
Anyways, Sleep 2007, the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, is just wrapping up at the Minneapolis Convention Center, and Christopher Snowbeck as a roundup of all the ways people are making money putting us to sleep…
That sleep medicine is booming is no secret to most people who watch television, where the French drug company Sanofi-Aventis and Massachusetts-based Sepracor have spent millions to promote their respective sleep medicines Ambien and Lunesta. The two drugs generated
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combined sales of more than $3 billion in the U.S. during 2006, according to IMS Health, a health care information company.
On a parallel track, hospitals, doctors and entrepreneurs have in recent years financed a building boom in sleep labs. Patients are sent to sleep labs to determine if they suffer from sleep apnea, a condition where the sleeper momentarily stops breathing, and then catches his breath with snoring gasps that interrupt and prevent prolonged periods of restful, deep sleep.
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