Dr Posner further strengthens SleepCogni’s existing medical and scientific advisory team with his world-renowned expertise in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia.
SleepCogni, a medical device and software company that aims to bridge the gap between clinicians and insomnia patients, today announced that Dr Donn Posner has been appointed as Medical Advisor to their team, further strengthening its medical and scientific advisory board with world-renowned expertise in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I).
Massachusetts-based Dr Posner is a pioneer in the empirically validated CBT-I methodology and is co-author of ‘Cognitive Behavioral Therapy of Insomnia: A Session-by-Session Guide’ to educate clinicians; and ‘Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia in Those with Depression’, a guide for clinicians working with insomnia in the context of mood disorders. Dr Posner is the founder and president of Sleepwell Consultants, and his primary collaborators are Michael Perlis, PhD and Jason Ellis, PhD.
Dr Posner’s invaluable knowledge and experience will complement and enhance SleepCogni’s research and development function led by CSO, Dr Maan van de Werken (PhD in Chronobiology).
Dr Posner commented: “It is with great pleasure and interest that I join the medical advisory board of SleepCogni to help their excellent team develop the wearable medical device.
SleepCogni is a device that has potential to be both a direct treatment device for insomnia and/or to serve an adjunctive tool for Behavioural Sleep Medicine clinicians to better assess and extend the treatment of their sleep disordered patients.
I look forward to working with the team to use my experience in Behavioural Sleep Medicine and CBT-I to help understand the product’s mechanisms of action, how it can best be utilised, and to determine what types of patients might be the best candidates to benefit from using this product.”
Having spent 25 years serving as the Director of Clinical Behavioral Medicine for Rhode Island and Miriam Hospitals, Dr Posner is currently Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine and a consulting psychologist, for the Palo Alto VA.
Previous roles held by Dr Posner include Director of Behavioral Sleep Medicine (BSM) for the Sleep Disorders Center of Lifespan Hospitals and Clinical Associate Professorship in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown University.
Dr Posner is a member of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and was one of the first Certified BSM specialists recognised by that group. He is also a founding member of the Society of BSM and has also now achieved the status of Diplomate with the Board of BSM, the highest level of qualification and competency they bestow.
Richard Mills, SleepCogni’s CEO said: “Dr Posner’s unrivalled CBT-I expertise will add significant value to the design of SleepCogni’s assessment and treatment programs. This, combined with his experience in training world-leading CBT-I therapists, hands-on clinical expertise, and familiarity with the sleep clinic infrastructure in the US will also be fundamental in the wider roll out to clinics and patients.
“Attracting someone of such high calibre as Dr Posner is testament to our progress as a leading sleep technology organisation. It moves us closer to our goal of helping clinicians deliver a more personalised therapeutic approach whilst simultaneously increasing capacity to reduce the growing backlog of patients.
“I look forward to Dr Posner’s input and help to make this vision a reality for all insomniacs.”
SleepCogni provides a novel and unique technological solution for insomnia patients, to aid clinical decisions and enable clinicians and therapists to identify patterns that the human eye cannot see.