Decoding the Technological Revolution and AI Transformation in Sleep Apnea: Innovations from Chinese MedTech Pioneers

Have you ever been woken up in the middle of the night by your partner’s snoring? Or perhaps you are the one who snores, waking up feeling groggy, with a dry mouth, and as if you haven’t slept at all?

Many people regard snoring as a sign of “sound sleep,” even joking that it is a standard feature of middle-aged men. However, in the eyes of pulmonologists and healthcare professionals, this seemingly commonplace phenomenon points to a severely underestimated public health issue—Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA)Approximately 200 million people in China are affected by this condition, with an adult prevalence rate exceeding 20%, yet the awareness rate remains below 1%. In other words, one in five adults may be a patient, but among every 100 patients, fewer than one is aware of their diagnosis.

Beneath the surface lies a market with substantial demand for diagnosis and treatment. Entrepreneurs pursuing diverse technological approaches are navigating their own courses within the same river.

April 29,The 24th “Deal Roundtable” Co-hosted by VCBeat, Wei Jie Yao, and Jiuhao CapitalIn the live broadcast room,Ding Yuguo, Founder and CEO of Qinglei Technology; Jia Yan, CEO of Shanling Medical; Wang Shiyi, General Manager of Weigao Healthsat together. They respectively represent three facets of the sleep and respiration field:Millimeter-wave radar non-contact monitoring, hypoglossal nerve implant stimulation, home ventilator therapy。

“Sleep Is Not a Shutdown”, attendees stated, “Sleep is a severely overlooked underlying operating system for life and health.”

Human sleep is divided into N1, N2, N3 stages, and the rapid eye movement (REM) stage. Deep sleep serves as a critical window for the body’s self-repair; however, patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) are unable to complete full sleep cycles due to frequent arousals, resulting in repeated interruptions of the repair process.

OSA is also a source disease. The repeated nocturnal hypoxia and sleep fragmentation are quietly eroding the cardiovascular, endocrine, and even nervous systems, making it a "silent trigger" for hypertension, diabetes, myocardial infarction, and stroke. Most people are unaware that they spend about one-third of their lives in an unhealthy state.

In terms of clinical cases, Wang Shiyi cited two real-life examples. In one instance, while his mother was hospitalized, a patient transferred from a provincial-level hospital in another region was admitted to the same ward. The patient had a cardiac pacemaker implanted but suffered from frequent arrhythmia, cyanotic lips, and a significantly elevated BMI. When Wang asked whether she had undergone sleep monitoring at her local hospital, her response was, “What is sleep monitoring?”—indicating that a patient with long-term arrhythmia had never been advised to screen for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) even at a provincial-level hospital.

Second, an employee of Weigao Health experienced hyperglycemia every morning upon waking. Despite repeated adjustments to his medication regimen, his blood glucose levels remained poorly controlled. The reason was that no one had informed him that nocturnal sleep apnea could be one of the causes of uncontrolled morning blood glucose.

Taken together, these two examples precisely illustrate an awkward reality:Even in clinical settings, screening for OSA remains grossly inadequate.

However, the landscape is changing. Sleep monitoring is expanding beyond traditional departments such as pulmonology and otolaryngology to penetrate cardiology, endocrinology, geriatrics, rehabilitation medicine, and weight management centers.“It can be said that sleep monitoring is gradually being incorporated into all hospital departments, much like electrocardiography.”Wang Shiyi stated,National policies are also driving this trend—hospitals at the county level and above are required to establish sleep clinics.

However, changes on the clinical side have not rapidly narrowed the cognitive gap among patients:71% of patients are unaware that OSA can cause the “three highs,” and nearly 50% worry about becoming dependent on ventilator therapy.“Many people have gained some awareness of the dangers of snoring, but this understanding remains fragmented,” said Ding Yuguo.

How can patient screening be better implemented? What treatments are available after diagnosis? How can treatment efficacy be ensured? Domestic companies are addressing these questions through innovative solutions—

Qinglei Technology, established in 2019, is an AI healthcare enterprise commercializing technological achievements from Tsinghua University, specializing in the integration of millimeter-wave radar sensing technology and artificial intelligence.Currently, Qinglei Technology has passed the special review for innovative medical devices; it already holds three medical device registration certificates, with the fourth expected to be approved in Q2.

The working principle of millimeter-wave radar can be understood as follows: it acts like a small, tireless detector that actively emits millimeter-level electromagnetic waves toward the human body. When these waves encounter the body, they reflect back, and by analyzing the time delay and frequency shifts of the reflected signals, the radar can determine information such as respiration, heart rate, and body movement. In the specific context of sleep monitoring, when a person lies in bed, breathing causes centimeter-level fluctuations in the chest cavity, while heartbeats induce even subtler sub-millimeter vibrations, all of which can be captured by the radar.

Leveraging its foundational capabilities in hardware and AI, Qinglei Technology has divided its product iteration into three phases:

In the 1.0 era, the issue of data availability was addressed. Radar can non-invasively monitor physical signals such as respiratory rate, tidal volume, inter-beat intervals, heart rate variability, and body movements including turning over. In the 2.0 era, clinical validation was completed. The correlation between OSA diagnosis using this technology and the Apnea-Hypopnea Index (AHI) from the gold-standard polysomnography (PSG) reached 0.98, while the agreement in sleep staging with professional technicians achieved 0.8–0.85. In the 3.0 era, the “medical device” label is being removed. Ding Yuguo stated that the core value of Qinglei Technology lies in data and artificial intelligence, rather than in millimeter-wave radar itself. Therefore,The Qinglei Technology team is also continuously exploring diverse business models and expanding its operational boundaries, including launching AI subscription services targeted at elderly care, health management, and insurance companies.

Currently, Qinglei Technology covers more than 400 hospitals and over 2,000 health and elderly care institutions, accumulating more than 50 million hours of real-world monitoring data.

Established in 2023, Weigao Health is a subsidiary of Weigao Group, a leading enterprise in China’s medical industry. It is dedicated to providing diagnostic and therapeutic solutions for sleep apnea, as well as innovative, comprehensive solutions for medical device products including oxygen concentrators, respiratory rehabilitation equipment, and blood pressure monitoring devices.

Currently, positive airway pressure (PAP) therapy is the first-line treatment for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP), which delivers a constant level of positive airway pressure throughout the entire respiratory cycle, is the most commonly used modality. However, PAP therapy has long been challenged by issues such as low patient adherence and insufficient personalized adaptation.

Centering on PAP, Weigao Health has undertaken three initiatives in the field of sleep-disordered breathing. First,The World’s First “Foam-Free” Ventilator, eliminate the microbial risks associated with the sponge, and reduce noise to 25 decibels. Second,Proprietary algorithms enable a leap from “pressure adjustment by time intervals” to “pressure adjustment per breath.”Third,Explicitly propose “one patient, one disease” subtype-based treatment.OSA accompanied by insomnia, hypertension, and diabetes requires distinct pressure modes, humidification curves, and mask selections—an approach that aligns closely with the disease phenotyping first explicitly defined in the 2025 updated guidelines for OSA diagnosis and treatment.

Wang Shiyi believes that ventilators currently suffer from severe homogenization, partly because manufacturers have not delved into clinical practice to understand individual patient differences. He cited an example: patients with heart failure may experience predominantly obstructive events in the first half of the night and predominantly central events in the second half, a pattern that cannot be adequately addressed by a single ventilation mode. He predicted that,In the future, ventilators will inevitably integrate multidimensional monitoring of heart rate, blood oxygen, blood pressure, and even blood glucose, upgrading from “respiratory protection” to a holistic closed-loop system of “respiratory + cardiac protection.”

Shanling Medical was established in 2022, focusing on the application of neuromodulation and brain-computer interface technologies in the field of sleep-disordered breathing.

For patients with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), a significant proportion experience intolerance to positive airway pressure therapy, leaving an unmet clinical need. Shanling Medical has adopted a minimally invasive approach—hypoglossal nerve stimulation. In simple terms, this involves using electrical impulses to stimulate the nerves that control the tongue, causing it to move slightly forward during sleep, thereby opening the obstructed airway.

Overseas pioneer Inspire Medical Systems has opened up the hypoglossal nerve stimulation track, with annual business revenue exceeding $900 million.Jia Yan, CEO of Shanling MedicalThe doctor identified room for improvement—minimizing surgical trauma and the presence of foreign bodies within the body. Overseas products typically require two to three incisions, with surgery lasting 1.5 to 4 hours, and involve implanting a battery-powered pulse generator in the body.The Shanling Medical team has relocated the battery externally, powering the device via wireless energy transmission, with only a miniature electrode remaining implanted in the body. The surgical incision has been reduced to a 3-centimeter opening, and the procedure time shortened to just over 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, Shanling Medical is also making intelligent “additions”—compared to overseas products with fixed parameters,Shanling MedicalAI is applied to dynamically adjust stimulation parameters in real time based on different sleep stages and respiratory events, achieving personalized neuromodulation tailored to each individual. Currently, Shanling Medical’s preliminary clinical data have shown promising results, and larger-scale registration trials are about to be initiated.

Currently, from a broader perspective, patients with moderate-to-severe OSA are showing a clear trend toward younger ages.The willingness to undergo minimally invasive surgical intervention is higher among individuals aged 30–40 than among those aged over 50., which also opens up broader market opportunities for hypoglossal nerve stimulation therapy. Meanwhile, Shanling Medical is also expanding its product portfolio to include less invasive options, developing corresponding devices for patients with mild-to-moderate obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).

Product technology is the skeleton, while the market is the flesh and blood. A more pressing question is: How are these products actually selling?

From the perspective of the domestic market, Wang Shiyi provided two sets of figures: JD Health sold 190,000 ventilators in 2024, and sales exceeded 250,000 units in 2025. He attributed this growth to “patient awakening.” However, another set of data reveals underlying issues: one brand recorded over 10,000 units sold during a two-month Douyin live-streaming campaign, yet its return rate exceeded 50%; meanwhile, the return rates through conventional channels on Tmall and JD.com hovered around 20%.

Behind the High Return Rate Lies the Absence of Medical Services.In Europe and the United States, purchasing a ventilator typically requires a physician’s prescription and a prescribed pressure mode; in China, patients can purchase these devices freely, but parameter adjustments often rely on distributors or even the patients themselves. Wang Shiyi emphasized that while the rise of online channels is unstoppable, standardized service provision remains essential.

Ding Yuguo also emphasized that the key issue lies not in sales channels, but in the lack of a closed-loop service system. If a complete closed loop encompassing “screening–treatment–efficacy assessment–long-term remote management” could be established, the outcomes would be significantly different. Data from Qinglei Technology in elderly care institutions show that,One-third of elderly patients require ventilators, but these devices often fail to provide sustained benefits once removed from monitored and intervention-capable environments.

Beyond the domestic market, going global is another unavoidable topic.

In overseas markets, particularly the United States, the reimbursement system for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is more mature. Wang Shiyi revealed that since 2019, no Chinese enterprise has obtained U.S. FDA clearance for CPAP devices, and the stereotype abroad regarding Chinese ventilators remains that they are “cheap, low-end products.” However, a turning point is emerging: 80% of the supply chain for imported ventilators has already been established in China, with algorithms and motors being the only remaining core barriers—areas in which domestic companies have achieved key breakthroughs. In his view, if product performance can reach an equivalent or even superior level, cost-effectiveness will become the greatest competitive advantage.

Qinglei Technology is also actively advancing its global expansion. Its products have already been deployed in Seoul’s subway stations and the National Library of South Korea, with plans to enter Japanese elderly care facilities next. The company advocates shedding the “low-cost” label and instead promoting Chinese original AI standards abroad. It expects its core products to obtain CE certification in the second half of this year. Currently, it has completed global data compliance deployment on AWS Cloud. The company proposes that manufacturers specializing in monitoring, treatment, and services form consortia for international expansion, arguing that this approach offers greater advantages than going it alone.

From the perspective of Class III implants, Jia Yan pointed out that going global is not merely about exporting products, but rather about exporting entire systems. Requirements for wireless power transfer and battery transportation vary significantly across different countries. She believes that the true advantage of Chinese enterprises lies in the "engineer dividend," with iteration speeds several times faster than those of overseas competitors. However, due to varying registration requirements under different regulatory frameworks, this capability has not yet been fully leveraged—a challenge that must be addressed.

Amid current trends, the integration of cutting-edge technologies such as AI is enabling related products to better expand their market presence.

Although their technical approaches differ, the three share a highly consistent consensus on AI:It is not a tool for icing on the cake, but the variable that rewrites the rules of the game.

Ding Yuguo believes that many people view AI as an auxiliary tool to help doctors write reports, but in the field of sleep-disordered breathing, AI is not merely an aid—it is infrastructure and the most significant technological variable. By integrating AI technology,He outlined several strategic directions: expanding from single-disease diagnosis to broad-spectrum diagnosis, enabling the screening of multiple diseases in a single night; upgrading from disease diagnosis to health risk prediction; and ultimately integrating into clinicians’ workflows to serve as an AI-powered productivity assistant.

Wang Shiyi defined what constitutes a “true AI ventilator”: it is not merely feeding reports to Doubao for interpretation—that is only AI-based analysis. A true AI ventilator must be built upon cloud-based large language models, automatically adjusting pressure parameters based on real-time monitoring of heart rate, blood oxygen saturation, and blood pressure, thereby achieving closed-loop feedback therapy. He predicted that,In the future, there will be no distinction between fully automatic single-level devices, fully automatic bi-level devices, and CPAP; instead, a single device will automatically match both the mode and pressure.

Jia Yan added from the perspective of neuromodulation, “OSA is a condition with significant inter-individual variability; each patient differs in airway anatomy, neural control capacity, and comorbidities, making AI inherently well-suited to process such data.” The 2023 International Consensus Statement (ICS) indicates that hypoglossal nerve stimulation (HNS) can be extended to a broader population of OSA patients (AHI ≤100, BMI ≤40) and recommends its combination with metabolic therapies (e.g., weight-loss medications) to optimize therapeutic efficacy. With the integration of AI, it is expected that more targeted treatment regimens will become available for these patients.

“In the field of sleep-disordered breathing, setting aside your own products, which innovative direction do you view most favorably?” posed Cui Jing, Founding Partner of Jiuhao Capital, posing an open-ended question.

Ding Yuguo expressed his hope that radar technology would become as ubiquitous at everyone’s bedside as Wi-Fi. “Non-intrusive, proactive health management is no longer just a slogan.” He also sees strong potential in integrating monitoring systems with smart home devices—beds, pillows, curtains, air conditioners, and fresh air systems—together creating a data-driven health environment.

Wang Shiyi mentioned,U.S. Companies Explore Morning Blood Tests for Diagnosing OSA, and minimally invasive or even non-invasive treatments can also be achieved through the injection of micro-particle neurostimulators. As for the ventilator itself, he hopes that in the future it willSmaller, Quieter, Smarter, so that patients no longer feel it is a burden.

Jia Yan pointed out the hope to delve deeper into neuromodulation: such as multi-target implantation, non-invasive stimulation, and combination with drugs... "But we don't necessarily have to do everything ourselves; we are willing to cooperate with excellent companies in the monitoring and non-invasive treatment sectors."

The journey toward a new era of sleep is long and arduous. All technological breakthroughs and industrial explorations have together forged this rocket, with AI perhaps serving as its roaring engine—yet what truly illuminates the starlight are always those who willingly listen to breaths in the deep of night.

With the agenda concluded, the night outside the window remains long.But at the very least, the sleepless nights of 200 million patients are finally being seen.