This project has been shortlisted for the DPH 2019 Innovation Prize – Best Partnership
Team: Melissa Berthelot representing M2JN Ltd.
Outline: Problem: The current clinical pathway to monitor blood circulation is based on regular medical check-ups in hospital. The assessments require physical and imaging examinations performed by trained, expert clinicians. The outcomes of these check-ups are often subjective and qualitative. Commercially available machines that aim to support clinicians during these assessments are bulky, expensive and hospital dependent. They all require experts to carry out the procedure, properly interpret the results and provide clinical diagnosis. It can also take about a week to obtain the results before being acted upon. There is currently no device or clinical pathway which systematically provides non-invasive continuous quantitative blood circulation monitoring, especially when patients are outside of the hospital. Worldwide about 40 million patients are directly affected. It is estimated that worldwide about 200 million people live with this condition without knowing. These limitations in the management of the clinical pathway can lead to late recognition of pathology, potentially increasing morbidity and related care costs. It also increases staff burden and healthcare providers expenditures.
Solution & Impact: With a close collaboration between clinicians, engineers and business minded people, a non-invasive continuous miniaturised, wireless dressing-patch device was developed to answer these limitations. The continuous measurements are sent to an online server for advanced data analysis where prediction on the patient health status evolution is derived. This piece of information on the prediction of how the health status will evolve, is something clinicians do not have due to limited technics. This knowledge will completely disrupt the current clinical pathway, allowing clinician to act faster to improve patient outcome and save the related care costs. More patients can also be identified and treated. As an example, in the UK the NHS spends £1.4B per year on these patients. With the use of our technology, £650M per year can directly be cost-avoided. It will also assist on the long-term European plans to:
- reduce health inequalities (access, quality of care and outcomes)
- provide the safest and highest quality health and care service
- improve out-of-hospital care
- balancing the budget by improving efficiency and productivity, eventually improving patient outcomes
Partnerships: This clinical limitation was first identified thanks to the collaboration with clinicians and patients. Additionally, to ensure the technology works as expected, it was primarily tested on:
- Animals by partnering with the Griffith Institute under the home office regulations
- Healthy humans by partnering with MSK lab and Imperial College London under ethic approval
- Patients undergoing surgeries with Imperial College London and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust under ethic approval
These partnerships created value to ensure satisfying results on both the engineering and clinical sides, clearly demonstrating the advantage of using such a technology in the daily clinical practice.
Conclusion: All these partnerships allowed the development of a safe, patient-centered and reliable technology embodied within a device suitable for daily use for many medical applications. Partnering with UK healthcare bodies, we are now aiming to commercialise this product to change the life of millions of patients and clinicians for the better.
