Spurwink's Journey with Therap Connect: Transforming Lives with Smart Sleep Mats

Small insights can lead to big breakthroughs – something Spurwink, a Maine-based agency supporting individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, has experienced firsthand. When staff at Spurwink learned about Therap Connect’s tools for automated data collection, they recognized it as an opportunity to embrace technology and enhance the services they offer. Since implementing Therap Connect, Spurwink has witnessed numerous benefits to the organization and the individuals they support.

David Van Tassel, Associate Director of Adult Services at Spurwink, was eager to try Therap Connect. “I like to work with new shiny things,” he says. As an early adopter of Therap Connect, Spurwink integrated smart health devices, including sleep mats, scales, blood pressure cuffs, and thermometers, into their daily supports. These devices send health metrics into Therap automatically, providing quick access to invaluable insights. For Spurwink, this data has allowed staff to make more informed decisions and address individuals’ needs faster than what was possible with traditional methods.

Therap Connect has played a key role in Spurwink’s support strategies, particularly for an individual with a history of behavioral challenges. “We had worked with [the individual] for a number of years with different plans and different medications to get [his behaviors] as stable as we could," Van Tassel explains. Staff implemented a sleep mat to better understand how the individual was sleeping. “Within the first week there was a pattern – the most REM sleep he got was 30 minutes or less and most nights it was none,” says Van Tassel.

If your primary care physician [orders] a sleep study, you get one night. The sleep mat actually gives you reoccurring data every night.

This data allowed Spurwink to see a correlation between the individual’s sleep patterns and behavior. “We started to be able to link behavior struggles and irritation…to the nights he had the least amount of REM sleep, which gave us the data we needed to approach the psychiatrist and the doctor to start working [on his] sleep,” says Van Tassel. “As we did that, he started getting more quality sleep and his body didn't need as many meds. His psychiatrist has cut his meds and he's now on the lowest amount of behavior meds he's been on [in years].” By leveraging Therap Connect, Spurwink was able to address the individual’s low sleep quality, leading to a better quality of life.

This story demonstrates the power of automated data collection. "If you're working with people who are nonverbal, they can't tell you what's going on in their body…You can be working with doctors and making guesses and shots in the dark for six months to a year and maybe find out what's going on,” Van Tassel explains. With limited information, providers often have to rely on trial and error, potentially delaying effective interventions. “If your primary care physician [orders] a sleep study, you get one night. The sleep mat actually gives you reoccurring data every night,” says Van Tassel. Therap Connect helps providers facilitate informed decision-making by delivering continuous, real-time insights, ultimately improving the lives of the individuals they support.

Through innovative tools like Therap Connect, Spurwink continues to redefine what it means to provide truly individualized support—ensuring that every person they serve receives the best possible care tailored to their unique needs.

We have an individual with congestive heart failure and her doctor wants her weight to be taken every single day. Being a middle aged woman, she does not want to discuss her weight and she does not want people to know what her weight is. [With Therap Connect], she can just turn her scale on, step on, and her staff doesn't need to know what her weight is. She can pick the person she's most comfortable with that can print the report and send it over to her doctor to meet her medical needs and her support staff doesn't have to have any of that information. They just need the direction from the doctor. We're feeling that that will be pretty successful for her.

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