Speaking sleep and it’s importance with Dr Dale Rae, who is a senior lecturer in the University of Cape Town within the division of Physiological Science in the Faculty of Health Sciences - where she teaches and conducts all research related to sleep. Dr Dale is also the director of Sleep Science, a company that helps individuals with their sleep, assist companies to manage the sleep of their employees and analyze their employees sleep data.
When did you guys commence with Sleep Science as a business? "Sleep Science was established 5 years ago in the UCT as a research we were conducting, and now it is a formal business outside of the university, but with my academic role for sleep science I have been doing that for the past 12 years" .
So, since inception what have been your challenges as a business and how did you overcome those challenges? The biggest thing when we started was convincing people of how important it is to manage and look after their sleep. Yes people are aware it's vital to look after their typical health routines, their diet, and exercising to keep their mental health strong but it took a long time for people to also realize in that equation sleep is also vital to keep their body, mind and soul healthy. So, one of our biggest challenges was convincing people, companies and health insurance companies about the value of good sleep, and making them realize it is possible to intervene and help people manage their sleep as it improves productivity".
How does Sleep Science assist companies with your services? "So we work with groups of employees, and sometimes it's diverse and involves the whole organization to the top management. First, we do screening to check everyone's sleep then provide the company with feedback to say your employees are doing well, or some of them are struggling and this is the impact this could have on the business in terms of fatigue, productivity, illnesses and absenteeism - then we provide them with maybe group solutions or workshops, which can be sleep and health related educational content - from infographics to music, little videos or newsletters tailor made for specifically for their sleep needs. For the public our services are available online and also in person".
What has been your highlight/s thus far? "There's two things I can think of now, one is watching young people come into the business and learn the skills, the competencies and solutions to grow their own ways of assisting people - and that for me is incredibly rewarding. Second one, was the recent project we did where we were helping this one company to develop an algorithm to use data to analyze sleep health".
And when you are not directly working on the business, what do you do to keep sane? "I sleep, she giggled. But yes I do take my sleep seriously. Other than that, I spend a lot of time with my amazing family, exercising a lot" .
Lastly, your motto? "Simply optimize your sleep, one should be able to customize their sleep according to what their sleep needs, instead of following general expectations of hours required to get a healthy sleep" .