“I’ll go to school on two and a half hours’ sleep.”

D4D Collaborator Dr Heather Elphick (PI, Non-Invasive Ventilation project) discussed the rising incidence of sleeping difficulties in children in the Guardian on 4 March 2017.

Dr Elphick is one of a handful of paediatric sleep specialists in the UK, and is based at Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust. In the article she describes issues with approaches to how sleep disorders are diagnosed and treated, and how sleep disorders are suspected sometimes to lead to inappropriate diagnoses of ADHD, and can lead to mental illness.  Currently, many children are thought to be unnecessarily prescribed melatonin.

D4D is working jointly with Elaros 24/7, a British company that was recently awarded a SBRI contract to develop, in collaboration with Dr Elphick, a paediatric sleep diary to aid the monitoring and diagnosis of sleep problems in children.

You can read the full news item including powerful patient stories here.