More than 200 Vitoria-Gasteiz City Council employees received activity bracelets to take part in a world-leading event; the goal of the research is to create a virtual assistant that will help improve sleep quality. Volunteers received training on the meter and learned how to use electronic resources related to testing. They were also explained how to contact the Sleep Unit doctors if necessary.

Once this process was completed, a year of fieldwork began. To do this, the sample was randomly divided into two parallel groups of 101 randomly selected individuals: one was a research group; the other, the control group. The members of the research team had a virtual consultation with the doctors of the Osakidetza Sleep Unit once a week, through a live online chat, with the aim of clarifying their doubts and providing personalized advice and recommendations. The other half of the participants will not be able to use this ¨live-chat¨ system to communicate with the medical team. However, data from their activity bracelets will be reviewed on a weekly basis.

The 202 participants in the trial were men and women between the ages of 18 and 65 who were healthy, had little or no sleep, and had not been diagnosed or treated with any sleep pathology. In order to be selected, they had to answer a questionnaire in advance and adapt it to the established admission and exclusion criteria. Vitoria-Gasteiz City Council's Public Health team has been involved in this process, and has worked hard to find volunteers and organize resources, among other things.

To the scientific work must be added the most technological partner of the project. In fact, these leading companies are experts in a variety of areas, such as measuring data through electronic devices, developing a communication system between the Sleep Unit and monitored people, or using artificial intelligence in setting up a machine learning system that provides sleep recommendations. For all these reasons, the Vitoria-Gasteiz Sleep Smart City project is one of the main actions of the Vitoria-Gasteiz Green Deal, a pact for the city's future and based on the green economy, social cohesion and the protection of the natural environment.

Vitoria-Gasteiz, at the head of the cities

“This is a unique example of the collaboration between the City Council, our health system, scientific research and companies that develop cutting-edge technology. With such examples, Vitoria-Gasteiz will be at the forefront of medium-sized cities in the transition to a green economy that we have already begun.

Health will play an increasingly important role in this new economic model, and our city, thanks to the excellent work of professionals such as Sleep Unit staff, has the best components to achieve a benchmark position, ”said Mayor Gorka Urtaran to present the progress of the Vitoria-Gasteiz Sleep Smart City project. at the press conference. He was joined by Carlos Egea, head of the Sleep Functional Unit at the ESI in Alava and researcher at the Bioaraba Health Research Institute, Saray Fanega, administrator of the Bioaraba Health Research Institute, and former footballer Luis Miguel Arconada.

Bioraba stressed that the initiative could have a significant social return. “As a Research Institute, our mission is to support researchers such as Carlos Egea and his team, as well as other health, science and other academic actors, in carrying out research and innovation projects, without forgetting that these projects must have an impact. in patients or citizens, as in this case. And Sleep Smart City is a good example of that, ”said Saray Fanega.

Carlo Egea said similar words. In his opinion, "poor sleep quality is a problem that is increasing, and it has to do with lifestyle, psychosocial stress, unbalanced diet and lack of physical activity, among others."