Imagine a device much like a watch secured to the wrist that wakes up those who are suffering from episodes of a sleep disorder in a gentle way, allowing the individual to experience a much higher quality of life.

Joseph Arrington, who lives in Tooele, has created a product he calls “The Sleep Shield” that will be available in a few years to help millions across the globe suffering from sleep disorders.

Arrington himself is a longtime sufferer of sleep paralysis.

Sleep paralysis occurs while the brain is awake, but the sufferer is unable to move their body, resulting in hallucinations, whereas sleepwalking occurs when the brain’s natural mechanism of normal paralysis during sleep fails to work correctly.

“When I was a kid, I recall being conscious of my sleep paralysis,” Arrington told the Transcript. “I remember telling my mom that I wish there was a robot that could wake me up and save me from the episodes… Every time I have sleep paralysis now, I wake up wondering why I can’t move my body. I feel like I am going to die, and I am in a funk for the rest of the day.”

Sleep paralysis may lead to anxiety, depression, and fatigue, and sleep disorders have resulted in tens of millions of dollars of lost revenue and work productivity issues, Arrington said.

Arrington’s idea for The Sleep Shield came about while he was taking a physiology course in 2013 and reading about different things that can be measured in the human body.

Throughout his undergraduate years, Arrington studied and began working on a prototype of a new device that would one day be able to use AI technology to read several different biorhythms, including heart rate. Arrington wanted the device to register when the biorhythms that would indicate an episode of a sleep disorder occurred. Then, the device would activate a set of stimuli or triggers that would wake the user up. The device would be tailored to each user and would include several different triggers to wake up sufferers, including vibrations; mp3 audio files, like voices of others; and oils that have familiar smells.

“If you are accustomed to waking up by the smell of eggs and bacon, it would release that smell,” Arrington explained. “The brain is like, ‘Oh, whenever I smell eggs and bacon, it’s time to wake up…’ The triggers will wake them up and allow the user to basically reset their sleep pattern.”

In the case of sleepwalkers, the device will prevent them from hurting themselves or others. For those who suffer from sleep paralysis, The Sleep Shield will take them out of their nightmare.

In 2017, Arrington created his company “Beacon Sleep Solutions” and recruited a bioengineer who became his co-founder. From 2017 until the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March 2020, Arrington and his partner worked on their new device.

“We had funding coming in and we had won several competitions, but when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we lost a lot of funding because the investors didn’t know what was going to happen,” Arrington commented.

In the fall of 2023, Arrington and his team resumed work on The Sleep Shield.

“We are so happy to be back up and running,” Arrington said. “We are currently finishing up a grant for the National Science Foundation… We are really excited to be moving forward with this.”

So far, the Beacon Sleep Solutions team has won several awards, and Arrington himself was named as one of the Utah Business’ Forty Under 40 honorees. The company has also completed in-house testing.

“A lot of our in-house testing has been done on myself, and it has been working,” Arrington commented.

From here, Arrington and his team will polish the device’s algorithm, so they are able to eliminate any false positives and ensure the device will solely act toward sleep disorders and not other bodily occurrences, like indigestion. They will also continue to speak to physicians and sufferers to ensure they are able to learn more about sleep disorders.

Although the device is currently created to be put on the sleeper’s wrist, the team will test different locations on the human body to determine which place is best for the product.

Company members are racing against the clock to release their product.

“There was a group of business people in the New York, Pennsylvania, area who came up with a very similar idea themselves,” Arrington said. “They started working around the same time as us on their device, and we saw a few years ago how eerily similar it was [to ours]. Right now, it’s a little bit of an arms race for how this is going to work and what is going to happen… Both of our companies have patents on the devices, but their device is patented specifically for nightmares and other dream-related, mind-accompanying sleep disorders. It was a little bit of a disappointment for us because one of the first demographics we wanted to help were veterans who were having PTSD-induced nightmares. Our patent can still help with this, but their patent is specifically related to that, and ours is patented toward all sleeping disorders.”

Nevertheless, Arrington and his team are excited to see what the future holds for both companies and for interactions between the companies in the future.

The Beacon Sleep Solutions’ team hopes to be able to market the first version of The Sleep Shield by the end of 2025 or early 2026. By 2027 or 2028, they hope to make the product available by prescription and covered by insurance. It will take this long because there is a lot of paperwork involved in creating a medical code that makes the product marketable, Arrington said.

Arrington is 37 years old, and he and his wife moved from the Salt Lake City area to Tooele City in 2020. Arrington has several degrees, including an associates degree from Ensign College, a bachelor of science degree in exercise and sport science with a minor in pediatric clinical research from the University of Utah, a masters of business administration from Westminster University, and a doctor of business administration from Drexel University. He is currently enrolled at the University of Utah School of Medicine working on a PHD in population health, with an emphasis in health systems and innovation research.

In the future, Arrington wants to attend both law school and physician school to become an attorney in order to fight for physicians’ rights and their residency training pathways. This will allow him to both provide treatment to patients and help others in their own medical journeys, he said.

Arrington and his wife are the president and vice president of the Tooele Rotary Club, and Arrington sits on the board of several nonprofit organizations. He is also on the wrestling team at the University of Utah and is the chair of the Utah Collegiate Wrestling Foundation. He longs to establish more college wrestling teams throughout the state, he said.

In his free time, he enjoys spending time with his wife and eight children. Arrington is able to travel the country when he is asked to present his research about The Sleep Shield. During these trips, he said he enjoys bringing his family along.

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