BETA.HEALTH Grant Recipient: 'Evido' – Odense University Hospital

Fatty liver disease is one of the most widespread chronic liver diseases in the world. It causes over a million deaths worldwide every year?– and contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t only affect heavy drinkers.?

The inspiration behind the innovation

One in four people has fatty liver disease without knowing it. Even more alarming is that this condition can be asymptomatic for fifteen to thirty years, meaning that some people go several decades before realising that their liver is in trouble. Once symptoms appear, the condition has already progressed to cirrhosis, which has a 75% fatality rate within 5 years of the first complication.?

Evido is based on a clinical need observed firsthand by Katrine Prier Lindvig, Maja Thiele,?and Aleksander Krag, three highly talented medical doctors – and pioneers within the field of liver research. Together with entrepreneur Taus Holtug, they founded Evido in 2021 and set out to ensure timely detection of this hidden and potentially fatal chronic liver disease.?

Of the motivation behind the company’s mission, Evido CMO and co-founder Katrine Prier Lindvig says, ‘I've met too many undiagnosed patients coming in with end-stage fatty liver disease. Unfortunately, all we can do is ease their condition by treating their acute complications. This is not sufficient. We need to take action and ensure timely support of these people before it’s too late.’

Outside of hospitals, there are currently no accurate implemented methods for identifying fatty liver disease. As a result, 75% of patients are only diagnosed once they’ve reached the end stage of the disease.?

Last spring, BETA.HEALTH awarded Evido mentorship and a healthcare innovation grant of 500,000 DKK. The company’s co-founder and CEO Taus Holtug says,?‘The BETA.HEALTH programme has been a huge help in getting this project off the ground! The grant has allowed us to expand our focus while the team supporting our project has helped us to open the right doors. This has been a great initiative for accelerating innovation from the inside!'

The innovation

Evido is based on the belief that more liver-related deaths could be prevented if healthcare systems were able to implement precision diagnostics to identify high-risk patients at the?first point?of care – thus shifting the focus to prevention instead of treating complications once the patient has reached the point of no return.

While liver tests are some of the most frequently sampled blood tests – over 5 million are performed yearly on Denmark’s 5.9 million residents – their accuracy remains a bit of a coin toss. The most common liver test, ‘ALAT’,??is only accurate 53% of the time. Evido’s?algorithm-based solution aims to change this by detecting advanced fatty liver disease with an accuracy of 87% based on a series of standard blood samples that are already widely used in primary care today.?

Evido uses existing healthcare systems and data, enabling clinicians to use the solution within the existing infrastructure and touchpoints – without any changes to their current workflows. The technology is based on over a decade of clinical liver research, and its data models have been validated with thousands of patients.

The project team

Taus Holtug:?MSc. Eng. in Design and Innovation; CEO and Co-Founder, Evido

Katrine Prier Lindvig:?MD and PhD Student; Center for Liver Research, Odense University Hospital.??

What’s next for Evido?

Evido is about to release its most advanced data model to date, which is capable of ensuring the timely detection of fatty liver disease. The solution has been designed specifically for primary care clinicians, and it’s directly compatible with existing healthcare workflows and systems. Its state-of-the-art risk-stratification accuracy has been optimised to detect liver fibrosis while avoiding overdiagnosing.