Wheres the research?

So its 2021 and no sleep app study. 

Heres what happened.

Having conducted a number of small case series studies, I knew conducting a large RCT study would not be easy but if you would like to know what it takes and why it isn’t going to happen this time here’s a very brief introduction;

1. You can’t just do research, you have to get ethics approval from a university or academic body.

2. Obtaining ethics approval is neither cheap or easy if you are not affiliated with a university – I gave up after spending $2,000 of my own money to hire a research assistant and develop a research plan and submit the application for approval, which is another $3,000, maybe more depending on how many reviews they need. In the end I was looking at being $5,000 out of pocked and potentially still not having the ethics approval.

3. Getting a university to collaborate with you is hard too – I tried to get around the costs of the ethics approval by going through a university – I gave up after being knocked back by 5.

4. Getting funding is like … don’t even dream about it. Research grants are not easy to come by and very competitive. Despite this I did manage to get an insurance company to offer to contribute $3,000 towards the study. But then because I now have a sponsor the cost of the ethics application goes up by… you guessed it, $3,000.00

5. I was not prepared to spend $20,000.00 (which was what it was going to cost in my estimation) to prove what the average user can find out from the reviews page on the app store. I haven’t mentioned the hours I spent writing the study design and collaborating on the ethics application, which makes war and peace look like a short story.

6. Make up your own mind; So research is great but not easy and fortunately, not the only measure of truth and knowledge.

Despite all this there is one piece of research I can lay claim to. My anxiety release app resulted in the first published account of an app being used to cure chronic pain. How could that happen you ask. Well it was a case of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, a chronic pain condition which is often associated with anxiety. See also www.anxietyreleaseapp.com

The paper is; Grant M (2014). The use of an app to manage carpal tunnel syndrome. OA Behavioral Medicine. Mar 20;2(1):3