DigitalHealth.London Spotlight: Healthy.io

Every week, we shine a spotlight on one of our DigitalHealth.London companies, founders, or NHS fellows. Today, we are excited to feature our current DigitalHealth.London Accelerator company Healthy.io and their digital wound management solution, Minuteful for Wound.

What is the problem you are trying to solve and why is it important?

Chronic wound management is a greater burden to the NHS than obesity and smoking-related illness, in 2017/2018 the cost of managing wounds was estimated to be £8.3 billion, that figure is now believed to cost closer to £10 billion.

The caseload of 3.8 million people living with chronic wounds is not visible, limiting the NHS’s ability to address this burden. This directly affects patient outcomes and patients live with the pain, discomfort and risk of deterioration of chronic wounds longer than is necessary.

A contributing factor to the lack of visibility is a workforce under considerable time pressure, a lack of standardisation of clinical practice, poor quality documentation, limited access to organisational wound data and a lack of continuity of care due to staff shortages.

What is the solution you have developed and how can it help with the problem?

Minuteful for Wound is a CE-certified specialist digital wound management solution for clinical use. The solution comprises three elements, a smartphone app, a web-based portal and a clinical data dashboard. Minuteful for Wound digitally enables the transformation of wound care through:

• Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered 3D wound measurements – Wound size is an indicator of healing progression, Minuteful for Wound makes it easy for clinicians to consistently capture wound measurements. The AI wound measurements are used to flag wounds that are deteriorating or not healing as expected enabling early visibility and intervention.
• AI-powered tissue type detection – Wound bed tissue types are often not consistently recorded due to time pressures, Minuteful for Wound auto detects three different tissue types saving clinical time and creating consistency in documentation.
• Best practice assessment flows – Minuteful for Wound has inbuilt standardised wound assessment templates aligned to best practice supporting standardisation and quality of assessment and documentation.
• Portal – Minuteful for Wound has a central web-based portal that enables virtual oversight of the entire caseload from any location. Senior and specialist clinicians can review patient wounds virtually enabling them to provide expert advice and guidance on treatment optimisation that is visible to all users of the solution in the app and shared treatment plan.
• Clinical data dashboard – Data is visible in an interactive dashboard enabling clinicians to proactively audit their caseload to meet clinical quality indicators.
• Patient app – Clinicians can onboard patients to our new patient app enabling patients to scan their wounds at home for remote monitoring reducing the burden of visits for clinicians and patients.

What is the history of your company?

Healthy.io pioneered turning smartphones into CE and FDA-certified medical devices. At our core, we are a computer vision and AI company that leverages smartphones to deliver clinical-grade solutions in kidney, wound, urinary tract infection and maternity care with proven results and regulatory approval in the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States. Healthy.io has tested over one million people across geographies, age groups and socioeconomic levels.

What successes have you had so far from successful pilots/trials/contracts?

Our partner organisations have demonstrated significant improvements in workforce productivity, quality and patient safety; including in-year cost savings. Some examples are:

• 50% reduction in the time taken to complete documentation
• 230% increase in patients being reviewed by senior nurses without an increase in resources
• 66% reduction in unnecessary visits by senior nurses allowing them to prioritise the patients that need them most
• 64% reduction in wound care incidents

What are your future goals? What does success look like?

Our goal is to continue to expand on our success in the community care sector, improving visibility and digitally connecting wound care pathways across all partners within integrated care systems. We aim to support self-care pathways with our Minuteful for Wound @ Home app to empower patients and drive further workforce productivity.

Success is advancing the standard of care through technology, improving patient and clinician experience, and promoting better outcomes.

How has your time on the DigitalHealth.London Accelerator helped you in achieving these?

The DigitalHealth.London Accelerator has been instrumental in many ways but in particular:

• Providing us access to expertise in different healthcare settings to enhance our knowledge in delivering connected care that is impactful for clinicians and patients
• Networking opportunities to create new partnerships and collaborations but also to understand the healthcare ecosystem of London further
• Wide-ranging educational programmes to support our organisation’s learning and development
• Creating market awareness of our solution from social media, conferences and pitching opportunities amongst many others

Do you have any advice for aspiring digital health companies?

Stay focused! Work on evidencing the value your solution can deliver by working closely and collaboratively with your early partners to baseline and capture outcomes. In the complex and sometimes noisy world of digital healthcare, it can be too easy to get distracted and potentially dilute what makes your organisation unique and impactful.

Any asks for the audience?

Don’t just take our word for it, hear directly from patients and clinicians on their experience.

For more information, please contact us here.

Healthy.io is currently in Cohort 7 of the DigitalHealth.London Accelerator programme.

The DigitalHealth.London Accelerator programme is funded by the UK Government via 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 Levelling Up Fund.

For more information, please visit https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-
shared-prosperity-fund-prospectus.