Technology Overview

Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) is a syndrome attacking the kidneys, causing a rapid decline in their functional capabilities. In most cases, AKI occurs in conjunction with other diseases, typically those related to cardiovascular and respiratory systems. For this reason, the highest risk group for AKI are the elderlies, the diabetics, patients with hypertension or heart diseases.

The main problem with AKI now, is the timely diagnosis of the syndrome. It is important for AKI to be diagnosed as soon as possible as it can lead to chronic kidney disease, kidney failure and can even affect other organs such as the brain, heart, and lungs. Current way of monitoring for AKI is the manual reading of the urine level in the urine bag, which is highly inaccurate.

Our technology is a novel system for the early diagnosis of AKI through urine monitoring of patients in intensive therapy units (ICUs). Our system is able to inform the clinicians about patient’s AKI in real time and remotely thanks to proprietary Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms. The technology is designed with catheterized patients in mind.

Technology Features, Specifications and Advantages

Our technology is a digital biomarker that can solve the problems of late diagnosis of AKI. Using dedicated software and hardware components, renal failure can be predicted by assessing the patient’s urine output.

The system consists of the following algorithms :

• Monitoring algorithm: an algorithm which works on the inputted historical data about the patient (gender, age, creatinine, etc.) and gathers real-time data of urine output. After 6 hours of data collection, the algorithm can provide the actual AKI risk score of the patient.
• AI algorithm: this algorithm is activated after the first 6 hours have elapsed from the start of the patient’s stay in ICU. It quantifies automatically, continuously, and in real-time, the risk of a patient developing an AKI episode in the next 12 hours, thus providing the physician with an instrument to determine the best therapeutic strategy to prevent and avoid AKI episodes.

The technology has the advantages of

• Simple to set up and integrate with hospital setting.
• Reducing the mortality and complications caused by AKI for ICU patients.

Potential Applications

This technology is developed for early AKI diagnosis for patients in intensive care, nephrology, post-operative departments and in nursing homes.

Customer Benefit

More than 5% of hospitalised patients and more than 50% of those hospitalised in ICUs suffer from AKI. These patients exhibit a 5-fold increase in mortality and a further 27 days of hospitalisation. It is also costing the public health system an annual €3 billion in public health expenses. Our technology is not only able to improve the patient’s health prospects, it also reduces the public/private health expenses related to AKI episodes, by the reduction of days in ICU and the number of hospital re-admissions.