Call for papers - The future of circadian and sleep health in the digital era

Guest Editors

Jaime K Devine, PhD, Institutes for Behavior Resources, USA
Zilu Liang, PhD, Kyoto University of Advanced Science, Japan
Manuel Spitschan, PhD, Technical University of Munich, Germany; Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Germany

Submission Status: Open | Submission Deadline: 20 May 2025

BMC Digital Health is calling for submissions to our Collection, The future of circadian and sleep digital health. This Collection seeks to gather innovative research on the application of digital health on circadian rhythms and sleep. We invite submissions that explore the potential of digital health technologies in advancing our understanding of sleep patterns, identifying sleep disorders, and developing interventions to promote healthy sleep behaviors.

New Content Item This Collection supports and amplifies research related to SDG 3: Good Health & Well-Being and SDG 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure.

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Meet the Guest Editors

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Jaime K Devine, PhD, Institutes for Behavior Resources, USA

Jaime K Devine, PhD is the Director of Sleep Science at the Institutes for Behavior Resources, Inc (IBR). Dr Devine holds a PhD in Neuroscience from Brandeis University and Certificates in Sleep Medicine and Biostatistics from Harvard Medical School. Dr Devine is a subject matter expert in sleep behavior in operational populations and the use of wearable technologies for scientific data collection.

Zilu Liang, PhD, Kyoto University of Advanced Science, Japan

Dr Zilu Liang is the Founding Director of the Ubiquitous and Personal Computing Lab at the Kyoto University of Advanced Science (KUAS), Japan. A dedicated advocate of the Quantified Self movement, Dr Liang's research lies at the intersection of ubiquitous computing, personal informatics, consumer electronics, human-computer interaction, and digital health, with a particular emphasis on sleep and metabolic health. Her recent research is centred on developing persuasive digital health technologies aimed at promoting healthy sleep hygiene, and on establishing longitudinal data analysis methods to uncover personalized and actionable insights from self-tracking health data.

Manuel Spitschan, PhD, Technical University of Munich, Germany; Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Germany

Manuel Spitschan is the Rudolf Mössbauer Assistant Professor of Chronobiology & Health at Technical University of Munichand Max Planck Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics. After undergraduate studies in psychology at the University of St Andrews (2009-2012), he completed his PhD on melanopsin sensitivity in the human visual system at the University of Pennsylvania (2012-2016). Following a post-doc at Stanford University (2016-2017), he joined the University of Oxford on a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship, through which he collaborated with the Centre for Chronobiology in Basel (2017-2021). He is the current Speaker of the Steering Committee of the Daylight Academy, Chair of the Joint Technical Committee 20 of the CIE and past Chair of the Optica Color Technical Group.

About the Collection

BMC Digital Health is calling for submissions to our Collection, The future of circadian and sleep digital health.

Circadian rhythms and sleep play crucial roles in maintaining overall health and well-being. The use of digital health techniques and approaches in circadian and sleep research has led to significant advancements in monitoring and understanding sleep patterns, identifying sleep disorders, developing interventions to improve sleep quality, and characterizing the circadian clock “in the wild”. This Collection will gather innovative research on the application of digital health on circadian rhythms and sleep.

Understanding the application of digital technologies on circadian rhythms, sleep, and health is essential for developing innovative interventions and technologies that can effectively monitor and improve sleep patterns. Recent advances in this area have seen the development of wearable sleep technology, mobile health applications for sleep tracking, and sophisticated sleep data analysis tools. These advancements have provided valuable insights into individual sleep patterns and have facilitated personalized interventions to address sleep disorders and promote healthy sleep habits. Thus, this Collection aims to bring together research that explores the potential of digital health technologies in advancing our understanding of circadian rhythms and sleep, as well as their applications in promoting healthy sleep behaviors and addressing sleep-related health challenges.

We invite contributions that examine a wide range of topics examining the impact of digital health on monitoring and understanding circadian rhythms and sleep patterns, including but not limited to:

Digital health interventions for sleep disorders
Circadian rhythms and their impact on health
Wearable sleep technology and its applications
Validation studies of novel sleep technology
Sleep monitoring and data analysis
Ambulatory methods for measurements of circadian biomarkers
Mobile health applications for sleep tracking
Personalized interventions for addressing sleep disorders
The role of artificial intelligence in sleep research and interventions
Telemedicine and its impact on sleep health
The use of digital health in promoting healthy sleep behaviors
The ethical considerations of using digital health technologies in sleep research and interventions
Persuasive technologies for improving sleep hygiene
High-quality, reusable datasets related to circadian and sleep research

This Collection supports and amplifies research related to SDG 3: Good Health & Well-Being and SDG 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure.

Please email Alison Cuff, the editor for BMC Digital Health, (alison.cuff@biomedcentral.com) if you would like more information before you submit.

There are currently no articles in this collection.

Submission Guidelines

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This Collection welcomes submission of original Research Articles. Should you wish to submit a different article type, please read our submission guidelines to confirm that type is accepted by the journal. Articles for this Collection should be submitted via our submission system, Snapp. During the submission process you will be asked whether you are submitting to a Collection, please select "The future of circadian and sleep health in the digital era" from the dropdown menu.

Articles will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process and are subject to all of the journal’s standard policies. Articles will be added to the Collection as they are published.

The Editors have no competing interests with the submissions which they handle through the peer review process. The peer review of any submissions for which the Editors have competing interests is handled by another Editorial Board Member who has no competing interests.