Last Updated on February 4, 2024 by pg@petergamma.org
Why was the Dreem 2 headband pulled from the market and offered to scientists for a higher price? First it started selling for 500 USD, and it was critizised for it’s high price. But then it became even worse. The Dreem 2 was pulled from the market and was offered to scientists like us for 1 400 USD. Is this device really worth that much, and how could this happen? Dreem 2 was for instance introduced by Rob ter Horst on his YouTube channel:
But after a paper was published which evaluated the Dreem 2 with the title:
«Performance of the Dreem 2 EEG headband, relative to polysomnography, for assessing sleep in Parkinson’s disease»
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352721823002942
The Dreem 2 headband was pulled from the market for private users and offered for a higher price to scientists like us. This paper increased the value of the Dreem 2 headband. Was it a paper without a conflict of interest?
In the NON-FINANCIAL DISCLOSURE it says:
«FS was the principal investigator of the study. FS, MG, MC and PVB declare that the
research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships
that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.»
But in the FINANCIAL DISCLOSURE it says:
«This study was supported by Dreem sas. PJA and MEB are employees of Dreem, Inc. and VT,
ABH, AG, MH, ED and HJ of Dreem sas.»
Which means that the authors where not funded by Dreem, but the study was supported by Dreem.
In the ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS it says:
«We also would like to thank the Dreem team for their commitment to working on the Dreem
headband over these years.»
Are these statements of neutral authors who are really critical? This paper reminds of of the paper promoted by Rob ter Horst about the Polar H10 chest strap:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31004219/
Which was partly funded by Polar. The authors of this paper where not funded by Polar either. The principal investigator of this paper was Thomas Wyss. Thomas Wyss has a degree as a sports teacher of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. as well as a PhD. in Physiology of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. As far as we know Thomas Wyss mainly publishes papers on www.researchgate.net:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Thomas-Wyss
Is Thomas Wyss a full-time scientist? On linkedin it is listed that his main position is Deputy Rector & Prorector Teaching of the Federal University of Sport Magglingen EHSM:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-wyss-6b6061166/?originalSubdomain=ch
since 6 years. Are the products and papers we list here in this post convincing for scientists to use those for their research? And we further ask, is the procedure we list here the procedure of product developers in the lowest price range? To develop products with demo makers, which are eventually partly funded by social insurance companies? And as soon as the value of the product increases, the product will be pulled from the market and offered for a higher price?
The example of the development of the Dreem 2 headband is a warning to those who are interested in low-cost high-quality reserach and medical grade physiological sensor devices, as for instance the Dreem 2 headband, but eventually also PiEEG. If you use these devices or write paper with those, the risk is there that you help device developers to increase the value of their product, which eventually causes them to increase the price for it.
Comments are closed.