Ejuna SyncSleep (DTX)

Realising a new product to cure chronic insomnia

Ejuna SyncSleep enables patients to personalise the timing of melatonin, maximising its sleep-inducing effects, and engage in cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) to cure chronic insomnia for the long term.

A package of Ejuna 2mg prolonged-release capsules and two capsules beside it, along with a smartphone displaying the Sync Sleep app with a blue and dark background and a Get Started button.

User need

The NHS estimates that about 30% of adults experience insomnia or significant sleep disruption, with around 6–7% developing chronic insomnia, which can precipitate or exacerbate anxiety, depression, and reduced quality of life.


Context

Patients and providers are underserved by limited access to effective treatments such as CBT-I, and symptom-relieving medicines like melatonin are often improperly timed or administered.


Value proposition & business case

Combining digital CBT-I with melatonin enables an effective treatment to be delivered through existing pharmaceutical supply chains, increasing access at a reduced cost compared with stand-alone services.


Technologies

CBT-I; melatonin; behavioural science; dose-timing algorithms; patient-facing smartphone application; clinician-facing web application; AWS back-end services.

Role

As Director of Product Design, I led Ejuna SyncSleep’s design and development for Closed Loop Medicine. This spanned early scoping, ideation, design, medical-device certification, and submission for regulatory approval. The result was a new, viable treatment for insomnia.

Deliverables

Product definition & vision
UI & UX design
Packaging design
Service design
Usability Engineering File
Design and development capability

Outcomes

UKCA and CE Medical Device Certification
13M in funding secured
MHRA combination product submitted
Partnership secured with Teva

Digitising Therapy

Patients learn how to to implement effective therapy to cure insomnia. The experience designed offers patients a comprehensive way to time their medication taking, engage with CBTi learning content, implement new behaviours, therapeutic interventions and gain confidence by tracking progress and see that the treatment is working.

Two smartphones side by side displaying language learning app screens. The left phone shows a lesson titled 'Good Routines' with questions about sleep, progress at 25%, and a continue button. The right phone shows a video lesson with a smiling woman and the question 'What is insomnia?' with the label 'Part 1 of 3' and a 'Next' button.
Two smartphone screens displaying a sleep tracking app. The left screen shows a time of 9:05 pm, a notification asking if melatonin 2mg was taken at 9 pm, and a 'Sleep Now' button. The right screen shows a daily schedule with morning, afternoon, and evening activities and medication times, including wakeup, exercise, meditation, sleep lesson, melatonin, and sleep cycle.
Two smartphone screens displaying an app with a nighttime sky background, clouds, and sleep tracking options. The left screen shows a sleep log with options to see a night routine or sleep now, and the right screen shows a clock and sleep status.
Two smartphone screens showing a sleep tracking app interface. The left screen displays a sleep log entry form, with questions about melatonin intake, bedtime, time to fall asleep, and wake-up times. The right screen shows a sleep score of 72% along with suggestions for improving sleep, including sleep cycles and sleep hygiene tips.

Working closely with patients and clinicians, I attended therapy sessions using cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia, collaborated with healthcare professionals to develop a learning programme, ran behaviour change workshops to define the interaction approach, designed the interface with the product team, and validated the solution by testing with patients.

Integrating product access

Digital therapy is accessed directly on receipt of the medication package with no need for any other sign up procedure. This reduced friction in onboarding, ensured contextual relevance at the point of use, and increased user engagement by delivering access precisely when and where it was needed.

Image of a medication box labeled 'Ejuna 2mg', instructions for installing and using the SyncSleep app on a smartphone, including screens showing app overview, barcode scanning, and sign-up form.

Assembling a cross-functional team that included regulatory experts, a packaging design agency, and a UI engineer, I led the development of this solution. We researched regulatory constraints, explored methods for restricting app access, consulted pharmaceutical manufacturers to assess feasibility, developed packaging and app prototypes, then tested and iterated onboarding concepts with patients.

Personalised Treatment Decisions

Clinicians gain a clear view of patient progress through a simple interface that highlights behavioural patterns and medication adherence. The experience design supports treatment adjustments, enabling tailored dose timing for different types of insomnia, including delayed sleep onset, night-time waking, and early waking.

Laptop displaying a sleep tracking report for Jane Smith, including sleep disturbance, app usage, and sleep routine details.

In creating the clinical decision-making report, I collaborated with CLM’s chief clinical officer and two external sleep therapists to define the assessment logic, translated this into data visualisations, worked with designers and developers to create feasible solutions, tested and refined the interface with clinicians, and developed clinical instructions to support training for rollout.

Engagement using Effective Behaviour Change Strategy

Beneath the patient experience lies a carefully crafted engagement strategy designed to support vulnerable individuals who might easily drop off therapy. By introducing creative methods to tackle their condition, patients are encouraged to learn, implement, and track their progress as they actualise their therapy journey.

Diagram showing three smartphone screens in a cycle for a sleep therapy app. The first screen displays learning modules like 'Introduction' and 'Sleep Hygiene.' The second prompts the user about their sleep habits, like taking melatonin at 9 p.m. and completing a sleep log. The third shows a sleep log entry for November 2020, asking the user to fill in their sleep details and start the session.
Flowchart of a user interface app with sections for onboarding, sign-in, top and bottom navigation, and modules for menu, medications, notifications, log, therapy, learning, and tools management.

Shaping the product strategy involved analysing the cognitive behavioural therapy programme with sleep therapists, conducting workshops using the taxonomy of behaviour change, and mapping a prioritised set of techniques into an intuitive system architecture and interaction design for patients.

Medical Device Certification

To attain market access as a single prescription combination product, it was essential to certify the app as a medical device. This was achieved by partitioning any safety-related features and getting them approved separately, allowing for rapid and continuous improvement of the non-safety-related content in the CBT-I program.

Smartphone displaying the app 'Sync Sleep' with the title 'A Guided Path to Better Sleep', a 'Get Started' button, and a link to sign in. To the right of the phone, icons indicate certification and compliance.

For the UKCA and CE medical device approval, my role centred on developing the usability engineering file, writing the use specification, conducting a UFMEA risk analysis, designing controls, and coordinating evaluations with a third-party moderator.