DigitalHealth.London Spotlight: MyRenalCare

The theme for this year’s World Kidney Day, which takes place annually in March, is Are Your Kidneys Okay? Detect early, protect kidney health. The campaign calling for the implementation of early detection policies for high risk groups across the world, including targeted non-invasive testing.

To mark the awareness day, we’re shining the DigitalHealth.London spotlight on Accelerator company MyRenalCare. In this blog, they share their mission to transform the way Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) is diagnosed and managed, replacing traditional face-to-face appointments with digital health and point of care (POC) testing.

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

Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) has been named as a national public health emergency by Kidney Research UK. Across the country, approximately 7.2 million people, or 10% of the population, are living with CKD. By 2033, the number of people with CKD stage 3-5 is expected to reach 3.9 million, and the demand for dialysis is forecast to increase up to 400%.

The majority of people with CKD today are undiagnosed. Individuals can lose up to 90% of their kidney function without any symptoms.

Although there are NICE approved medications that significantly slow the progression of CKD, the lack of awareness within primary care means they are not being prescribed consistently. There are also long waiting lists for individuals to be referred to and treated by Tertiary Care.

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

MyRenalCare has integrated with point of care testing devices, allowing individuals to be screened for CKD in the community. This is particularly useful for reaching under-served populations who are at high risk of kidney disease. Individuals can access their results and associated education content in minutes on the MyRenalCare platform.

Once diagnosed with CKD, MyRenalCare empowers individuals with both early and late stage CKD to better self-manage their condition from home with remote support from renal specialists. Individuals self-monitor their blood pressure and weight against personalised targets and can access their laboratory results.

They can also access education content and contact their clinical team at any time through Patient-initiated follow-up (PIFU) appointments. MyRenalCare enables their clinical team to access this information remotely and rapidly up-titrate and optimise their medications. 

Today is World Kidney Day. Why is this campaign important to be aware of and how does your work contribute to its goals? 

This year, World Kidney Day falls on Thursday 13 March and is raising awareness of the importance of our kidneys, the impact of kidney disease and the importance of early detection.

MyRenalCare is directly supporting this by organising two screening events, one at Southampton General Hospital and one at Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth. With our partners, Nova Biomedical and Kidney Care UK, we will be encouraging individuals to take the kidney quiz to learn whether they are at high risk of Kidney Disease.

We will also be offering point of care kidney screening for free, with instant results. We hope to make kidney screening a national priority.

What’s the history of your Company? 

MyRenalCare was started by our Founder, Dr Nicholas Sangala, a Nephrologist at the Wessex Kidney Centre in Portsmouth. MyRenalCare was created in response to an interaction with a patient he had cared for, for many years.

The patient needed to travel a significant distance for a regular face-to-face appointment and in this instance, they had reviewed the patient’s results and deemed him to be well before they had even entered the clinic room. They both agreed it was a waste of both of their time and at that point, Dr Sangala promised to find a better way to manage his patient.

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

• Won the NHS Parliamentary Future NHS Award last year
• Independent health economics has shown we increase outpatient capacity by 30%+ and reduce costs 25%
• Independent lifecycle analysis has shown MyRenalCare reduces carbon emission vs face to face appointments by 80
• Over 2000+ patients are currently using MyRenalCare
• Secured our first multi-year commercial contract
• Rolling out to a second renal unit
• Won multiple grants

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

DigitalHealth.London has been a huge help for us. Firstly, meeting the other brilliant current and past cohort of companies has been amazing. Being able to share experiences and knowledge with others in the same field has been hugely reassuring, beneficial and energising.

The structured training sessions have been really insightful and the focus on value propositions has been particularly helpful. The networking events have unlocked new connections and opportunities that we wouldn’t have otherwise had. I’d definitely recommend it to anyone who is considering applying!

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

Success is helping to improve the lives of as many people as possible living with Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD). This includes:

• Expanding our existing tertiary care offering to as many renal units as possible
• Piloting and scaling our targeted screening approach
• Piloting and scaling our remote rapid up-titration approach for early stage CKD

Do you have any advice for aspiring digital health companies? 

• Always think people first, tech second
• Apply to DigitalHealth.London
• Lead times working with the NHS are extremely long! Try and be as lean for as long as possible to avoid burning through cash quickly and need to continually raise more cash

We’d love to work and collaborate with anyone who is passionate about improving the lives of those with Chronic Kidney Disease. If that’s you, please get in touch!

At the moment we’d love for more renal units to try MyRenalCare, and we’d love to get two pilots off the ground. One for point of care screening for kidney disease, and one for remote and rapid up-titration for early stage CKD. If you are interested, or have any others ideas, we’d love to hear from you!

Please also feel free to follow us on LinkedIn.

MyRenalCare is currently in Cohort 8 of the DigitalHealth.London Accelerator programme and is an alumnus of the DigitalHealth.London Leap 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.