S03: Remote Patient Monitoring in Kidney Care

Welcome to Signals, a series of short briefs on the news, companies, and technologies shaping healthcare’s next frontier. Which [space] are you tracking? Comment below and read the full series on Substack. Keep exploring, my friends.

Signal: Remote Patient Monitoring in Kidney Care

If you read the most recent Signal, you know early diagnosis and treatment are two of our most pressing challenges (and opportunities) in kidney care. But what about for individuals who do advance to kidney failure and end up needing dialysis or a kidney transplant to survive?

More than 800,000 Americans are living with end stage kidney disease today, 70% of whom are on dialysis, a treatment that uses machines to filter a patient's blood to make up for the work of damaged kidneys.

The dialysis patient journey is harrowing. Around 360 people start that journey every 24 hours— that's more than 125,000 people per year. Beyond the crucible of their prescribed treatments, a dialysis patient spends 11 days in the hospital per year on average for reasons including issues with vascular access and fluid management to name just two.

A retrospective study from 2017 found that nearly three-quarters of all 30-day dialysis patient readmissions were potentially avoidable. Together, these hospitalizations cost Medicare upwards of $14 billion per year.

What if we could help clinicians and care teams monitor patients between dialysis treatments and blood draws, and do so without asking patients and care partners to change their routines or take on additional care burden?

That's where novel monitoring solutions enter the fold, paving the way for a healthier, safer and more cost-effective future for dialysis patients. From non-invasive potassium monitoring to analyzing droplets of discarded dialysis fluid, in this Signal we take a closer look at a few companies solving multi billion-dollar pain points for dialysis patients and those who care for them.

What's in this Signal

• Alio 's FDA cleared, non-invasive, and multimetric remote patient monitoring platform.
• CloudCath 's remote monitoring device for patients on peritoneal dialysis (PD) at home.
• Why Proton Intelligence is building the first real-time, on-demand potassium monitoring wearable to guide treatment of hyperkalemia.
• How Biofourmis is leveraging its industry-leading remote monitoring technology to support hospital-at-home programs in rural areas.

We'll also cover why it matters and what the future looks like when we get it right.

Read the full post and explore more from this [space] on Substack.??

Going forward, I will be releasing previews of Signals here on LinkedIn before publishing all posts, interviews, and deep dives on Substack. Stay tuned and keep exploring, my friends. As always, I'd love to hear which signals are on your mind.