AI software designed to help diagnose sleep apnoea in children has achieved high accuracy in an NHS trial, with the findings independently reviewed by clinical specialists.
Glasgow company Seluna tested its autoscoring and sleep staging software on 500 retrospective sleep studies from NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde’s Royal Hospital for Children. The technology, which hosts a pipeline of machine learning algorithms for automated data analytics, processed each study in under five minutes to identify severe cases with 100% accuracy based on AHI severity classification, while mild cases achieved 86% and moderate cases 92%. Overall, the algorithms performed within the bounds of human inter-scorer variability.
Paediatric sleep apnoea affects up to 4% of children globally yet remains widely underdiagnosed. The condition can cause serious developmental and behavioural problems if left untreated. Sleep studies produce vast amounts of complex physiological data that doctors and physiologists must interpret manually – a process that can take up to four hours per patient and requires specialist staff who are in short supply.
Seluna’s cloud-based autoscoring software intends to support doctors and physiologists to interpret paediatric sleep studies more efficiently, reducing strain on health services and providing faster results to families.
Dr Scott Black, CEO of Seluna, said: “I’ve heard doctors describe their sleep departments as ‘drowning in data’, with no ability to scale to meet growing demand. What this study proves is that our software works on real NHS data, with all the missing sensors and messy signals that paediatric sleep medicine involves. Our goal now is to replicate this study with hospitals across the UK and get our solution into the hands of clinicians.”
Findings from the study, which has been supported by the West of Scotland Innovation Hub, have been independently reviewed by paediatric sleep specialists at Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust and University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust.
Dr Haytham Kubba, paediatric ENT surgeon at the Royal Hospital for Children, said: “Adenotonsillectomy is the most common procedure we perform in children, and sleep apnoea is the most common reason for it. Seluna’s technology has the potential to reduce delays, improve consistency in reporting, and allow us to prioritise care for the children who most urgently need intervention.”
A multi-site, UK-wide has now received ethical approval, led by Chief Investigator, Dr Heather Elphick at Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust. This will involve 6 paediatric hospitals including Glasgow, Southampton, Sheffield, Alder Hey, Evelina, and Great Ormond Street. Seluna is also conducting a further multi-site algorithm optimisation study in the United States, pending ethics approval, led by Chief Investigator, Dr Cristina Baldassari at Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters.
