Proven innovation
Smartphone powered urinalysis
Healthy.io combines computer vision, AI, user-centric design and rigorous science to turn the smartphone camera into a clinical-grade medical device.
Fully integrated into the clinical system, Healthy.io’s technology allows users to self-test at home and securely share the results with clinicians via a test kit and mobile app. Smartphone enabled urinalysis opens up an immense opportunity to increase patient adherence and satisfaction, improve health outcomes, close gaps in care, and reduce costs and workforce pressures.
The innovation complements established clinical efforts including chronic kidney disease screening in diabetes, antenatal care, urinary tract infections, and outpatient management (e.g. renal, urology).
About
Urinalysis is the second most common diagnostic test with 42m annual urine tests undertaken in the NHS. Currently, each test requires a visit to a clinic- patients provide a urine sample and the nurse or clinician either perform the test on-site visually, use a point-of-care analyser or send it to a central lab. This process takes up time and effort for both provider and patient, and recommended testing frequency and adherence for multiple conditions are therefore unmet (e.g. 66% compliance to annual albumin urine test in people with diabetes). Built around existing semi-quantitative urinalysis dipsticks, smartphone-powered urinalysis complements established clinical efforts by empowering patients to test themselves at home with no quality compromise, and securely share results with a clinician. Clinicians can then follow up only with those patients that require further care, reducing the need for a face-to-face interaction or laboratory testing. The service can be integrated into any system through an HL7 connection (already integrated into EMIS, SystmOne, PKB).
Following an evaluation with Modality GP Partnership in Hull (2,196 patients), Healthy.io achieved 72% adherence in the eligible untested diabetes population by supplying a full service- contacting the patients, sending them the kits, and activating a communication protocol with reminders to achieve maximal adherence. An independent evaluation by York Health Economics Consortium (YHEC) demonstrated that rolling this out in England could diagnose up to 22,946 new cases of CKD and avoid 3,463 cases of ESRD, amounting to £209bn net savings in five years.
