About one in nine adults suffer from chronic insomnia and its residual effects like drowsiness, cognitive issues, and irritability as well as increased health risks like diabetes and heart risks if left untreated.  While many treatments are available, the challenge lies in determining how well a medication or other sleep aid works in individual patients. Now a new study from the University of Maryland School of Medicine has found using real-time smartphone-based assessments can help to determine the effectiveness of sleep medications by detecting improvements in daytime insomnia symptoms including thinking, fatigue, and mood. Following a two-week course of treatment, this smartphone-based assessment approach  detected treatment effects more powerfully than did traditional methods like recall questionnaires.