A UK company working with hospitals to prevent thousands of deaths by predicting and preventing acute kidney injury (AKI) has won a national Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) competition to scale its technology across the health service.
Patientrack, which provides the NHS with technology that automatically detects patients at risk of deterioration and then alerts nurses and doctors to intervene, has been working alongside Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to develop a system to automatically detect and help prevent AKI. The condition is cited as being 100 times more deadly than MRSA and is estimated to cost the health service between £434m and £620m every year – more than skin cancer and lung cancer combined.
Professor Lui Forni, a consultant in intensive care and renal medicine, adviser to the project and chair of the AKI section of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM) said: “Patientrack gives clinicians the ability to flag up which patients are at risk of acute kidney injury almost from the moment they walk through the door, so that they can see which patients are at risk from the first set of observations.
“Effectively it is an intelligent real-time technology that should systemically improve the care of patients. It will prevent and it will help to improve the management of people who come in with AKI.”
