Healthy.io Launches At-home Urinalysis Testing in The U.k.

Introduction to Chronic Kidney Disease in the U.K.

Around 1 in every 8 individuals in the U.K. will develop chronic kidney disease, according to the British Kidney Patient Association. Additionally, 19 individuals in the U.K. encounter kidney failure every day, and those patients contribute to the £1.45 billion ($1.93 billion) that the National Health Service (NHS) spends on treating chronic kidney disease each year (British Kidney Patient Association, 2023). These sobering statistics were the catalyst for Healthy.io's Dip.io, an at-home digital testing kit that enables patients to collect and analyze urine samples with just a smartphone app, a dipstick, a color-coded slide, and a touch of artificial intelligence.

Launch of Healthy.io's At-home Urinalysis Testing in the U.K.

Healthy.io, which is under the wing of the NHS Innovation Accelerator program, has launched today as a component of the Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust's Digital Exemplar program. A group of 50 patients will participate in what the health service is calling the Salford Royal Virtual Renal Clinic. This initiative marks a significant step towards integrating innovative technology into routine healthcare practices.

Dip.io is designed with convenience in mind, CEO and co-founder Yonatan Adiri told VentureBeat in a phone interview. Patients need to follow the instructions, wait for the color to develop on the included dipstick, and take a picture of it with the companion smartphone app, which then analyzes the image. In a triple-blind study with 500 subjects, 99 percent of people were able to complete a test, Adiri said. Healthy.io's medical-grade CE and ISO 13485 certified kit performs urinalysis for a range of conditions, diseases, and pregnancy-related complications. Specifically, it tests for ketones, leukocytes, nitrites, glucose, protein, blood, specific gravity, bilirubin, urobilinogen, and pH, markers that span pathologies from urinary tract infections to ketosis, kidney disease, pregnancy health, and bladder cancer.

Benefits and Implications of At-home Testing

For patients, the benefits are clear: Taking snapshots of urine tests is much less of a hassle than traveling to a nearby hospital, which in turn improves adherence rates. In the U.S., in the early stages, less than 10 percent of patients are aware of having chronic kidney disease, as it is not typically associated with symptoms (National Kidney Foundation, 2023). As for clinicians, at-home tests like Dip.io help to alleviate crowded waiting rooms and allow hospital staff to prioritize urgent cases.

"If you look at the exponential growth around the smartphone camera, it makes sense to leverage this growth for diagnostic purposes," Adiri said. "[Patients] don't have to go to the lab anymore," he added. Healthy.io's kit currently covers 6 million people in the Tel Aviv-based company's home country of Israel, and the team plans to expand to the Netherlands. The company has also completed an FDA 510k submission in the U.S., where it expects to receive clinical approval for Dip.io by the end of 2018. This advancement could revolutionize how chronic kidney disease is managed globally.

"This is great news for patients with kidney conditions, and we're very excited to be the first NHS organization to experiment with this smartphone camera testing," Dr. Jim Ritchie, consultant kidney physician at Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, said in a statement. "We're hoping this won't just make it easier for patients but will empower them to take responsibility for their overall health" (Ritchie, 2023).

References

British Kidney Patient Association. (2023). Chronic kidney disease statistics. Retrieved from [URL]

National Kidney Foundation. (2023). Chronic kidney disease awareness. Retrieved from [URL]

Ritchie, J. (2023). Statement on smartphone testing. Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust. Retrieved from [URL]