Oniros : Does a numeric sleep diary improve the appropriation of this tool for patients with sleep disorders in general practice, compared to a paper tool?

Juliette Chambe, Eve Reynaud, Ulker Kilic-Huck

Keywords: sleep diary numeric tool research general practice

Background:
The sleep diary is a recommended diagnostic tool for characterizing various sleep and circadian rhythm disorders, by collecting data over several weeks, in the patient's usual living environment. It is free, non-invasive, and less prone to memory bias than retrospective questionnaires. It supports the consultation to explore and discuss sleep hygiene, to set treatment goals and to follow the evolution. Despite these advantages, the handwritten sleep diary is tedious to fill in and time-consuming to analyze, limiting its use and compliance in follow-up. In specialized centres, only a quarter of the patients bring back a sleep diary sufficiently filled to have any clinical interest.
An effective needs to be appropriated both for patient and doctor. This does not seem to be sufficient with the paper sleep diary.
An online sleep diary, "ONIROS", has been developed with the aim of simplifying and standardizing its completion by the patient. It allows the physician to have access to these data, but also to a summary in order to facilitate the interpretation.

Research questions:
Our objective is to compare the return rate of an interpretable sleep diary, according to the type of diary (paper and electronic versions), during a general practice consultation dedicated to sleep.

Method:
We would plan a mixed method. First, a randomized controlled study on a population consulting a general practitioner with a sleep complaint, in order to keep as close as possible to the usual management of patients with sleep disorders. GP investigators would randomly give one of those diary when a patient comes with a sleep complaint, and planify a dedicated consultation within the next month. Second, a qualitative study based on patients and GPs interviews, to explore their appropriation of the tools, as well as pros and cons of paper and electronic versions.

Results:

Conclusions:

Points for discussion:
the initial submission was rejected by the jury of a call for proposals for methodological issues

discuss the randomization and the choice of control

discuss the qualitative part of the project