Sleep has become a battleground for technology firms, insurers and health providers, with significant money riding on what happens overnight. Once treated as a personal habit, sleep now features in boardroom discussions about healthcare costs and long-term risk.
That shift was dramatically evident at last week’s CES 2026, the world’s largest consumer technology show, held in Las Vegas in January every year. Sleep-related products occupied more space and made more ambitious claims than ever before. Many systems focused on influencing sleep while people are asleep, with technology adjusting physical support and physiological responses during the night. In the past, it was almost exclusively about monitoring sleep.
The scale of investment points to a market that has moved beyond novelty. Global Market Insights values the sleep technology sector at more than US$24-billion in 2025, spanning wearables, smart beds, sensors and software platforms. Grand View Research places the figure closer to US$30-billion when medical-grade devices and services are included. Both forecast sustained growth through the next decade, driven by ageing populations, rising diagnosis of sleep disorders and the expansion of digital health ecosystems.
However, South Africa’s leading sleep researcher, Dr Alison Bentley, head of the Sleep Health Centre SA, draws a sharp distinction between consumer sleep technology and clinical sleep medicine.
“None of the fancy gadgets regarding beds or changes in light are going to help the people with established insomnia or apnea that I see in my practice,” she says.
That focus on precision was Bentley’s original motivation for establishing a specialist sleep laboratory 30 years ago.
“Accuracy of diagnosis for sleep disorders” was central, she says. “While most labs and home studies only look at sleep apnea (which is the most common sleep disorder) I tend to get complicated patients and need more precise data. As I also analyse my own studies, I can really look at the studies in great depth. Also, the quality of studies varies hugely, which I can’t afford for my patients.”
Ironically, says Bentley, the most important advance in South African sleep medicine has been simplification.
“The greatest advance in the clinical area is the movement of most studies from complex in-facility studies with multiple channels, the full polysomnography (comprehensive sleep study), to home studies with minimal equipment.
“Advanced software allows us to get very precise data on apnea and sleep from a probe on the finger and a disc on the chest. This has made a massive difference in waiting time for studies and costs.”
This mirrors developments on the CES show floor, where non-contact monitoring was prominent. Exhibitors pointed to user drop-off as a persistent problem. Devices that interfere with comfort often lose engagement over time, weakening long-term datasets. Radar, thermal sensing and acoustic analysis allow monitoring to continue passively, improving data consistency.
Interest in sleep data now extends well beyond device makers. Health insurers increasingly treat sleep as a behavioural factor with long-term cost implications. In South Africa, Discovery Health has elevated sleep within its Vitality programme and supports ring-based sleep tracking through a partnership with Oura, integrating sleep metrics into incentive structures alongside physical activity and nutrition.
Bentley cautions that most consumer sleep technology targets people without diagnosed sleep disorders.
“There needs to be a point at which someone who is unable to improve their duration of sleep or quality of sleep may have a sleep disorder and needs to be referred from the well space into the sleep disorder space, seeing a medical doctor.”
Product launches at CES illustrated how that commercial logic is shaping sleep technology.
In the mattress category, Stareep introduced its SmartSleep system, positioning the bed as an adaptive platform. Sensors embedded in the mattress and base monitor movement and posture, adjusting firmness dynamically as sleepers shift.
The Sleepal AI Lamp from XSmart Century Technology combines non-contact sleep tracking with automated control of lighting and sound. Radar and thermal sensors monitor movement and breathing, while light temperature and intensity adjust to support sleep onset and waking.
Recognition through the CES Innovation Awards highlighted the sector’s shift from tracking to intervention. Awarded technologies included the Sleepal AI Lamp; Earable Neuroscience’s FRENZ Brainband, which uses EEG sensors and audio stimulation to influence sleep onset and depth; and LumiMind’s LumiSleep, which won a CES Speed Award for non-invasive sleep technology using real-time EEG by monitoring brain activity.
NeuroTx showcased WillSleep, a neck-worn device applying non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation during sleep, positioned as a treatment for insomnia and stress.
Bentley places these developments in a longer medical context.
“Most of the scientific description of apnea occurred in the middle 1970s so many date the field of sleep medicine from that point. In the last 50 years there has been a huge growth both in recognition of the subtlety of sleep disorders as well as the global impact that sleep disorders have on general health.
“Good data sets now show a direct effect of sleep apnea on hypertension and atrial fibrillation (abnormal heart beat) and an increased risk of everything else. Whether it is dementia, depression, obesity, diabetes, liver disease or anything else – any abnormality in sleep increases the risk and shortens the time to development of these diseases.
“For insomnia (there has been) a major shift from using medication to the recognition that insomnia is a cognitive and behavioural dissonance with the biological realities of sleep. First line treatment has shifted towards adjusting the thinking and behaviours around sleep. Medication has advanced from simply sedating the patient to reducing wakefulness.”
Sleep apnea treatment remains dominated by CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) therapy. CPAP uses a bedside pump and mask to deliver a steady stream of air during sleep, preventing interrupting breathing.
“Alternative therapies are being investigated more as sleep medicine moves from being an elitist branch of medicine, and a ‘nice to have’ but not as important as, say, cardiology. You can only get diagnosed and treated if you have money. The sense is that sleep is only important once we have dealt with the actual medical problems.
“Now we know that poor sleep is driving the high prevalence of those major disorders it becomes more important to have access to sleep medicine for every citizen of the country.
Bentley says she is “increasingly getting patients coming to see me because their wearable tells them they are not getting a lot of deep sleep or that there are many restless moments”. These are people, she says, “who otherwise would not know that there was a problem”.
Dr Benji Ozynski, a sleep medicine doctor at the Sleep Health Centre, says technology holds tremendous promise for this field, but is not a solution in itself.
“As hardware, software and AI continue to improve, costs will decrease and more people will have access to extraordinarily rich sleep data from wearables and smart sleep systems, but data on its own is not the solution,” he says. “What really matters is turning that data into clinically meaningful, actionable insights. That is where sleep medicine practiced by medical professionals remains essential.”
* Arthur Goldstuck is CEO of World Wide Worx, editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za, and author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI – The African Edge.