Fausto Padilla is a student of Audiovisual Communication at the University of Navarre. Together with Paula Flores and Juliana Mira, he won his university's The Challenge innovation competition with Somnium, a smart melatonin diffuser - the sleep hormone - created to ensure quality rest. In this interview, Fausto will introduce Somnium and give us his opinion on entrepreneurship.

What is Somnium?

Somnium is the answer to one of the biggest problems of our time, which is insomnia. The World Health Organization says that more than 40% of people today do not sleep well, and this affects the economy. It is said to be the source of many health problems, such as type 2 diabetes, cerebrovascular accidents, many heart problems and problems related to the cognitive function of the brain.

Somnium is the answer to that. It is an intelligent promoter of melatonin - the sleep hormone. Its purpose is to help improve sleep, because in addition to emitting this substance, it also has different functions that are controlled by the same device and the mobile phone through an application, measuring the quality of your sleep and through artificial intelligence, an algorithm will make personalized recommendations for your circulation cycle. to be able to control, that is, the regulation of your sleep schedule.

Through this combination of various issues that can help solve this problem, Somnium seeks to reach this 40% of the population and also to give everyone the quality of life they deserve, as it is always predicted that all children alive today will live to be over 100 years old. So what's the point of living all those years if you're not going to have enough quality of life? That's one of the main problems we try to solve with this smart diffuser, which, in addition to emitting these substances, can also emit soothing sounds, ambient sounds, and even a special kind of light that helps you get used to sleep at certain times. So Somnium focuses on that, with various functionalities.

How is it?

In this competition we were asked to imagine who our ideal consumer would be, and ours was a medical student who is one of the biggest exponents of chronic sleep deprivation, who has to organize himself in a certain way or else his sleep cycle will be disrupted. So this product would detect what time you go to bed and what time you wake up through different motion sensors that would measure this, and also, seeing if there is any regularity, it emits sounds and the substance melatonin, which is able to help regulate its sleep cycle, and, at the same time, through this type of algorithm, it is learning through this boy's sleeping habits, improving his sleep quality and at the same time improving his health in all senses, which he will personally experience when the consequences of this good rest come. So, this type of person adapts to their sleeping habits and gets all the benefits that it entails.