Airese: Sleep Apnea Screener

The Air Station sells CPAP therapy, yet most people who need it have never been told they might. Awareness is the bottleneck, not treatment, so Airese sits at the top of that funnel: a free way to check a worrying symptom and, if it warrants it, be guided toward care.

That goal set the tension. The app needed the warmth of a consumer tracker so people would use it, and enough credibility that a serious result is taken seriously, without ever claiming to diagnose. Two constraints framed the work. Every line touching risk was cleared with a medical advisor, and the app had to stay smooth on the modest Android phones our clinic partners use.

I benchmarked five sleep apps across onboarding, data and tone. Sleep Cycle and SnoreLab are warm and start with almost no setup, but both stop at the data and never tell a worried user what to do next. SleepCheckRx is the opposite: an FDA cleared screener with clear clinical risk bands, but locked behind a prescription and a single platform.

Airese takes the banded clarity of SleepCheckRx and the warmth of the consumer apps, then adds what none of them offer. When a night looks serious, it hands the person to The Air Station Customer Care Centre rather than leaving them alone with a number.

One question per screen. Sensitive questions answered one at a time lower the load and give a sense of progress. Multi question layouts tested worse, with higher drop off.

No account before value. Registration walls are the top cause of abandonment in health apps, so onboarding leads with the screening and asks for an account later.

A score people can act on. Every recording produces a Sleep Score out of 100 and a Breathing Disturbance Index, an estimate of significant events per hour from snoring, gasping and blood oxygen drops. Without a licence for a clinical questionnaire such as STOP-BANG, I framed it as an awareness indicator, banded by severity to decide how firmly the app nudges someone toward a checkup, never as a diagnosis.

I tested the first build with 16 participants on Maze, 12 valid sessions. People found it easy to learn and reached the premium page without trouble, but two core tasks failed. First time setup succeeded only a third of the time, finding information two in five.

The reasons were specific. Search returned a blank screen while claiming results were found, the category filter could freeze the app, the timer could not be scrolled backwards so anyone who overshot was stuck, and the results screen read like a dense infographic showing only a single day.

Version two answered each finding. The timer became a picker that scrolls both ways and can be set per day, so a session stops on time even when someone forgets, with a line explaining what it is for. Results were rebuilt around the Sleep Score, with a plain verdict above the data and a week view for spotting patterns. Search and filter were repaired, text grew, and every small icon gained a label.

Where users asked for things we could not staff, such as one to one expert help, I scoped a realistic answer: a critical result opens a call back to The Air Station Customer Care Centre, and an Explore library keeps trustworthy guidance in the app.

Airese is in build and ships in September 2026 as the top of The Air Station's care funnel. A person screens at home in one night, and a serious result opens a call back form that books time with the Customer Care Centre, who guide them toward a checkup and, where suitable, a Home Sleep Test and CPAP therapy. Six doctors are already confirmed to receive these referrals, including Dr Shaun (ENT, Gleneagles), Dr Lee (O2 Lung), Dr Riane (neurologist, Indonesia) and Dr Kugan Raman (ENT, Malaysia). The screening journey itself drops from a 27 step paper questionnaire to 9 in app, so a worrying result ends with a person on the phone, not a frightening number.