App data applied: revealing sleep patterns across the world

The BBC recently covered a story on how app data is being used to reveal global sleeping patterns. A team at the University of Michigan have been building Entrain since 2014 to help people overcome jetlag.

Dr Akhilesh Reddy, from the University of Cambridge, told the BBC:

There's been a trend for these studies using data from Twitter and apps and finding interesting correlations across the world we've never been able to do by putting people in sleep lab. It highlights that although our body clocks are programming us to do certain things, we can't as we're ruled by social circumstances. We won't know the long-term consequences of this for many years.

Dr Reddy explained that future of studies of this sort will gather data from activity and sleep monitors.

Reincubate’s app data APIs provide access to data from a broad range of apps, including HealthKit, fitness and sleep trackers. The company has experience supporting clients building a broad set of clients access, interpret and solve their needs using this data. For more information, read about the iCloud API.