CKDSens develops a new, point-of-care healthcare platform to improve renal patient’s well-being by monitoring relevant biochemical parameters in a single drop of blood. The innovation employs an easy-to-use hardware device and predictive software to make it easier for patients to discover and monitor their kidney disease before it becomes more serious and irreversible.

Renal patients do not realise the gravity of their disease until they are in a late stage. Chronic kidney disease is silent until it reaches advanced stages and patients need to start dialysis or transplantation. Proper monitoring would allow to delay the progression of kidney disease and pharmacological treatment could probably postpone renal disease development. Once it is diagnosed, monitoring the condition often requires hospitalisation. The people working in this project are seeking to solve this problem, by seeking the right technology and working with business people.

Team

• Dr. Josep M. Campistol (HCB), internationally recognized nephrologist.
• Josep Lluís Falcó (Genesis), business & regulatory consultant.
• Alexandre Duclos (MADoPa), expert in feedback from patients.
• Adrià Maceira (CreatSens), CEO of the start-up, project management & fundraising expertise.
• Claudia Delgado (Eurecat), expert in manufacturing strategies.
• Cecilia Vera (UPM), product testing in lab.
• Josep Teruel (UB), industrial designer.
• Dr. Marc Xipell (HCB), nephrologist.

The project

CKDSens is developing a new healthcare platform to improve renal patient’s well-being by making it possible to monitor relevant biochemical parameters from a single drop of blood. The innovation promises a less expensive means of monitoring that is easier to use, and could potentially be administered by patients themselves. The CKDSens project will validate the innovation and help to identify the real market where the product can truly generate value and business.The CKDSens consortium has identified the need to build a structured pathway to reach the market, and to create a business proposal that private investments can follow.

The CKDSens project will seek to help this innovation reach society. It will take the research and innovation initially developed in a small consortium, led by the start-up, which is the owner of the intellectual property, and create a stronger business case, a stronger manufacturing strategy, a stronger design and a stronger validation pathway.

EIT Health has provided valuable connections through its network and the economic support to create synergies between entities from different specialities, so they can work together in a project that could bring a new innovative tool to connect patients and physicians.

The mission of CKDSens is to cover a huge unmet medical need by providing a better diagnosis of chronic kidney disease patients while reducing related costs in the health care systems.

Main impacts will be through:

• reducing direct healthcare costs;
• delaying development of chronic kidney disease;
• reducing the waiting time in hospitals by more than 20%;
• providing a fast monitoring system that takes less than 5 minutes;
• improving monitoring quality;
• increasing the quality of life of patients.

By making it easier to detect and monitor chronic kidney disease, the CKDSens project will help improve treatment, which is in keeping with the EIT Health Focus Area of “Improving Care Pathways”. By creating a possibility for patients to test themselves, the project is in keeping with the Focus Area of “Bringing Care Home”. This project also promises to improve healthcare for European citizens, which is one of the main goals of EIT Health.

External partners

• CreatSens