Congratulations to Dr. Frances Chung, winner of UHN’s 20th annual Inventor of the Year Award.
Dr. Chung is being recognized for her innovative work re-imagining the standards of care for patients living with sleep apnea through the development of the STOP-Bang clinical questionnaire—a screening tool originally created to help identify patients with undiagnosed sleep apnea for the prevention of critical incidents during surgery.
Sleep apnea is the most prevalent sleep-breathing disorder that is often left undiagnosed and is associated with other health conditions such as coronary artery disease, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, renal disease, congestive heart failure, and even cognitive impairment.
Dr. Chung developed the STOP-Bang tool after hypothesizing that some critical incidents and deaths post-surgery might be related to sleep apnea due to its obstruction of the upper airway. After conducting sleep studies (polysomnography) on hundreds of patients, she determined that a high proportion of patients had undiagnosed sleep apnea and created the STOP-Bang questionnaire as a simple yet effective way to screen for the disorder.
This simple online tool has a diagnostic accuracy of over 80% as validated by laboratory polysomnography. The STOP-Bang questionnaire has now been adopted as a standard diagnostic tool for sleep apnea in 500 institutions across the world.
“The rapid scaling of Dr. Chung’s revolutionary yet simple STOP-Bang clinical tool is changing the vast landscape of sleep apnea diagnosis and treatment, ultimately contributing to A Healthier World,” says Dr. Brad Wouters, Executive Vice President of Science and Research at UHN. “Other sleep scales exist out there, but none are simple enough for patients to do at home with such a high degree of accuracy.”
“The success of STOP-Bang proves that even a clinical tool such as a questionnaire can be an important invention when you consider both the incredible patient impact and widespread commercialization potential,” says Laura Farran, Principal, Licensing and Commercialization, Biomaterials and Clinical Tools, UHN.
The Inventor of the Year award is sponsored by Commercialization at UHN and recognizes an individual or team whose invention has made a substantial and noteworthy commercialization contribution that is leading to ‘A Healthier World’. Read the full announcement here.
Infographic describing sleep apnea and the STOP-Bang questionnaire.