Sleeping machine Made in Vietnam

To serve the "healthy" lifestyle, thousands of wellness technology devices have been born, such as smart watches that measure heart rate, electronic scales that analyze body index, devices that measure dust in the air... Along with that, sleep-tech products have also appeared. But products from Vietnam are very rare.

Get into the difficult problem

According to the American Sleep Association, there is a sleep pandemic that is second only to the Covid-19 pandemic in terms of impact. If a normal person takes more than 30 minutes to fall asleep, it means that their sleep health is having problems. Medical support will have to intervene, but not everyone is willing to go to medical facilities.

Vu Ngoc Tam, a young Vietnamese professor who became famous in the US, was one of the youngest professors at the University of Colorado (USA) and later at the University of Oxford (UK). As the founder of the Mobile Networking Communication lab at the University of Colorado, Vu Ngoc Tam's thinking is to research projects and products that can be applied immediately to real life, because technology trends change so quickly.

Thinking is doing, Professor Tam worked with Professor Robin Deterding, a leading expert in the field of health, and discovered that he and many others were suffering from sleep apnea. This is a disease that prevents people from falling into deep sleep. Therefore, despite sleeping a lot of time, many people still feel lethargic and sluggish after waking up. To monitor and treat this disease, patients need to measure brain waves at Sleep Labs.

While the US has a few thousand Sleep Labs, in Vietnam there are only about 30 medical facilities providing this type of service. Here, patients will have many electrodes attached to their bodies to measure sleep quality. However, the high cost and the need for patients to travel made Professor Tam think of developing a personal device to solve this problem.

Earable NeuroScience was born with the desire to apply brain research into daily life, thereby bringing specific benefits to the community. After development and research, Earable NeuroScience's product not only measures accurately, but is also a smart headset with artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms that help select sounds suitable for each person's brain state. Rushing into solving difficult problems, Earable's product focuses on improving sleep, aiming to build a technology platform for brain science.

First product to win award at CES 2023

After a long period of research, FRENZ Braindband - a smart device that helps measure brain wave and body index in real time, thereby directly affecting by sound through bone-transmitting speakers was born. FRENZ Brainband helps users sleep faster, better, deeper, or can also be used for relaxation purposes, increasing concentration at work. This is the only smart wearable device on the market today that helps users sleep better by using sound waves, broadcasting content suitable for each person's brain waves.

It is worth mentioning that although Earable NeuroScience has a modest staff size (about 70 people), 90% are Vietnamese. FRENZ Braindband - Earable NeuroScience's first product, has gone through 8 rounds of changing the entire model, design and practical testing on 1,250 people, and has now entered the commercial production stage. Technical specifications show that with FRENZ Braindband, 87% of testers improved their sleep problems (patients fell asleep faster, reducing the average time to fall asleep by only 19 minutes). The expected selling price is 350 USD/product and will be delivered in April 2023, this can be considered a device with strong Vietnamese intelligence that can reach the international level.

To gain a foothold in the market, FRENZ Braindband will need time to prove itself. But we can be completely proud that this is the first and only Vietnamese product to win an award at CES 2023 (the world's largest exhibition in the field of consumer electronics) in the Wearable category. The road ahead for FRENZ Braindband is still very long, difficulties are still waiting for Professor Vu Ngoc Tam ahead, but surely he and his product are encouraging many other Vietnamese startups to conquer the challenge of putting their names on the global technology map, fulfilling the dream of "Make in Vietnam" that we are pursuing.

According to Vietnamnet