Background: Healthy sleep is vital for good physical and mental health. Sleep disorders and voluntary and societally-driven sleep restriction have a major negative impact on health, productivity and safety in Australia and internationally. A conservative estimate of the direct and indirect economic cost in Australia of the two most common disorders of obstructive sleep apnoea and insomnia alone is over $5 billion per year. Disturbingly, current health services and policy fail to cost-effectively manage these highly prevalent disorders due to inadequate training and resourcing of primary care professionals in sleep management and over-reliance on specialist services, complex and costly sleep apnea testing and unregulated industry practices.
To address this problem the Adelaide Institute for Sleep Health (AISH) was ... read more...