A group of three Flinders Northern Territory Medical Program (NTMP) students, who developed a tool to screen Indigenous Australians for sleep apnoea, have been awarded at the national Sleep DownUnder conference in Sydney.

The prize was for the best poster presentation in the category ‘Insights into Indigenous Sleep Health’.

Fourth and final year student Sam Benn who presented the group’s work at the conference, collaborated with 3rd Year student Teagan Short and 4th Year student Hugh Wirth.

‘There was a lot of genuine interest in the tool we developed… it caused a bit of a buzz,’ Sam said.

The three students travelled with a larger cohort including sleep physician and researchers from Darwin who presented a further seven research projects specific to Indigenous sleep health in the Northern Territory (NT).

One of the outcomes of the other research recently published in the prestigious SLEEP journal, which included 3078 patients from the NT, showed that obesity and hypertension are important risk factor for obstructive sleep apnoea.

The conference, Sleep DownUnder 2019, was held at the Sydney International Convention Centre from October 16 to 19 and was the 31st annual scientific meeting of the Australasian Sleep Association (ASA) and Australian Sleep Technologists Association (ASTA).