Managing Circadian Disruption due to Hospitalization: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial of the CircadianCare Inpatient Management System.

The article focuses on evaluating the effects of CircadianCare, an inpatient management system designed to mitigate hospitalization-related circadian disruption and sleep disturbances by personalizing light/dark exposure, meal timing, and physical activity schedules according to patients’ diurnal preferences. In a randomized pilot study involving 50 medical inpatients, CircadianCare showed a trend toward earlier bedtimes and a significant advance in dim light melatonin onset (DLMO) in a subset of patients, although the primary outcome of reduced sleep onset latency was not achieved. Environmental factors such as bed position near windows, which increased natural light exposure, were associated with higher sleep efficiency, while increased nocturnal noise fluctuations correlated with more frequent night awakenings regardless of treatment. The study highlights the feasibility of personalized chronotherapy in hospital settings and suggests that modulating environmental light and noise may improve sleep quality during hospitalization.