Each week we spotlight one of our DigitalHealth.London businesses, founders or NHS fellows. Today we are excited to introduce our current DigitalHealth.London Accelerator company, Healthy.io, and its digital wound management solution, Minuteful for Wound.
What is the problem you are trying to solve and why is it important?
Managing chronic wounds represents a greater burden on the NHS than obesity and smoking-related illnesses. In 2017/2018, the cost of wound management was estimated at £8.3 billion, with this figure now estimated to be over £10 billion.
The caseload of 3.8 million people living with chronic wounds is not visible, limiting the ability of the NHS to cope with this burden. This directly affects outcomes for patients, who live with the pain, discomfort and risk of deterioration of chronic wounds longer than necessary.
A contributing factor to the lack of visibility is a workforce under considerable time pressure, a lack of standardization of clinical practice, poor quality documentation, limited access to organizational wound data, and a lack of continuity of care due to lack of staff.
What is the solution you have developed and how can it help solve the problem?
Minute for the injury is a digital solution specialized in wound management, CE certified, intended for clinical use. The solution consists of three elements: a smartphone application, a web portal and a clinical data dashboard. Minuteful for Wound digitally enables wound care transformation through:
- 3D wound measurements based on artificial intelligence (AI) – Wound size is an indicator of healing progress. Minuteful for Wound makes it easy for clinicians to capture wound measurements consistently. AI wound measurements are used to flag wounds that are deteriorating or not healing as expected, enabling early visibility and intervention.
- AI-based tissue type detection – Wound bed tissue types are often not recorded consistently due to time constraints. Minuteful for Wound automatically detects three different tissue types, saving clinical time and creating consistency in documentation.
- Best Practice Assessment Flow – Minuteful for Wound incorporates standardized wound assessment templates aligned with best practices supporting standardization and quality of assessment and documentation.
- Portal – Minuteful for Wound has a central web portal that allows virtual monitoring of all records from any location. Senior and specialist clinicians can examine patients’ wounds virtually, enabling them to provide expert advice and guidance on treatment optimization that is visible to all users of the solution in the app and plan shared processing.
- Clinical Data Dashboard – Data is visible in an interactive dashboard allowing clinicians to proactively audit their workload to meet clinical quality indicators.
- Patient app – Clinicians can onboard patients to our new patient app allowing patients to scan their wounds at home for remote monitoring, reducing the burden of visits on both clinicians and patients.
What is the history of your company?
Healthy.io pioneered the transformation of smartphones into CE and FDA certified medical devices. We are essentially a computer vision and AI company that leverages smartphones to provide clinical grade solutions in kidney, wound, urinary tract infection and maternity care with proven results and approval regulatory in the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States. Healthy.io has tested over 1 million people across geographies, age groups, and socioeconomic levels.
What successes have you had so far through successful pilots/trials/contracts?
Our partner organizations have demonstrated significant improvements in productivity, quality and patient safety; including in-year cost savings. Some examples are:
- 50% off in the time required to complete the documentation
- 230% increase in patients examined by senior nurses without increasing resources
- 66% off unnecessary visits from senior nurses, allowing them to prioritize patients who need it most
- 64% off in wound care incidents
What are your future goals? What does success look like?
Our goal is to continue to build on our success in the community care sector, improving visibility and digitally connecting wound care pathways between all partners within integrated care systems. We aim to support self-care journeys with our Minuteful for Wound@Home app to empower patients and increase workforce productivity.
Success is about advancing the standard of care through technology, improving the patient and clinician experience, and promoting better outcomes.
How has your time at the DigitalHealth.London Accelerator helped you achieve these goals?
The DigitalHealth.London accelerator has been instrumental in many ways, but in particular:
- Providing us with access to expertise in different healthcare settings to improve our knowledge of connected care delivery that impacts clinicians and patients.
- Networking opportunities to create new partnerships and collaborations, but also to better understand London’s healthcare ecosystem
- Extensive educational programs to support our organization’s learning and development
- Communicate our solution to the market through social media, conferences and pitch opportunities, among others.
Do you have any advice for future digital health companies?
Stay focused! Work to demonstrate the value your solution can deliver by working closely with your early partners to benchmark and capture results. In the complex and sometimes noisy world of digital healthcare, it can be all too easy to get distracted and potentially dilute what makes your organization unique and impactful.
Any requests for the public?
Don’t just take our word for it, listen directly the patients And clinicians on their experience.
For more information, contact us here.
Healthy.io is currently part of Cohort 7 of the DigitalHealth.London Accelerator program.
THE DigitalHealth.London Accelerator The program is funded by the UK government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF). It is delivered by the Health Innovation Network (HIN) South London in partnership with the Office of Life Sciences, CW+, Medicity, NHS England, the Mayor of London and the Leveling Up Fund.
For more information, please visit https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-
Shared Prosperity Fund prospectus.
