Icelandic digital health SME combining AI, deep learning, and gamification for sleep diagnostics and personalised disease management.
SidekickHealth is an Icelandic digital health SME that builds technology platforms sitting at the intersection of consumer health engagement and clinical diagnostics. They started by developing gamified health behavior change applications — making disease management and healthy habits more accessible and engaging for patients. They subsequently expanded into AI-powered sleep diagnostics, applying machine learning and deep learning to obstructive sleep apnea and sleep-disordered breathing. Their value proposition is translating complex clinical data into personalized, patient-friendly digital health tools.
Both projects involve digital health delivery — the SidekickHealth SME-1 grant (2017) built a gamified health engagement platform, and SLEEP REVOLUTION (2021–2025) applies digital diagnostics and therapy tools to sleep disorders.
SLEEP REVOLUTION explicitly lists machine learning techniques, deep learning, and artificial intelligence as core competencies applied to sleep diagnostics.
SLEEP REVOLUTION (2021–2025) is centred on revolutionising diagnostics and personalised care for obstructive sleep apnea and sleep-disordered breathing.
The founding SidekickHealth project (2017) — titled 'Improving health the fun way… seriously' — was an SME Phase 1 feasibility study for a gamified chronic disease management platform.
SLEEP REVOLUTION targets 'personalized health care' and 'digital diagnostics and therapy', signalling a move from diagnostics toward personalised treatment delivery.
In 2017, SidekickHealth was focused on consumer-facing health engagement — a gamification platform for general wellness and chronic disease self-management, validated through an SME Phase 1 grant. By 2021 their profile had shifted sharply toward clinical AI: their participation in SLEEP REVOLUTION shows a pivot to deep learning applied to polysomnography and sleep disorder diagnostics, a far more technically specialised and clinically regulated space. The direction is clear — from broad consumer wellness toward AI-assisted clinical diagnostics in a specific, high-value therapeutic area.
SidekickHealth is moving from consumer wellness toward CE/FDA-territory clinical AI, making them an increasingly relevant partner for projects that need patient-facing digital interfaces backed by validated diagnostic algorithms.
SidekickHealth leads small early-stage projects independently (SME Phase 1 coordinator in 2017) but joins large research consortia as a specialist digital health contributor rather than as an orchestrator. Their presence in SLEEP REVOLUTION — a large RIA with 39 partners across 18 countries — as a participant suggests they plug specific digital platform and AI capabilities into broader academic-clinical programs. Working with them likely means engaging a nimble, focused team that delivers a defined technology component rather than a consortium management partner.
SidekickHealth has touched 39 unique partners across 18 countries, almost entirely through the SLEEP REVOLUTION consortium, giving them an unexpectedly wide European footprint for a 2-project SME. Their network skews toward academic medical centres and clinical research organisations active in sleep medicine.
SidekickHealth is one of very few Icelandic digital health SMEs active in H2020, and their specific combination of gamified engagement design and clinical AI in sleep medicine is a genuinely uncommon profile. Unlike academic sleep research groups, they bring a commercial product mindset to patient-facing interfaces. Unlike large medtech companies, they are agile enough to join research consortia as a focused technology contributor without contractual overhead.
