notlubo / nephro-sense

Solution to automate urine collection data and IV drip rate in ICU patients.

NephroSense

Problem

For now, unlike many other vital functions, urine output isn’t measured automatically. This costs hospital staff vital time and might result in mistakes and unnecessary approximations. The same goes for a manual checkup of infusion rate and fluids remaining. There's currently no widely used system for monitoring toe-to-room temperature gradient, even though it proved useful in clinical studies as a predictor of ICU mortality.

Solution

Our solution is based on weight measuring using load cells. These offer a great resolution (up to 0,1g), are cheap, and have zero additional per-patient cost. Same technology can be used for monitoring intravenous fluid intake and can therefore display valuable information. We included a temperature sensor for measuring toe-to-room temperature gradient, which has been shown to correlate well with the state of patient's circulation, especially when used in tandem with urine output monitoring.

Impact

Automated monitoring of urine output can be a huge timesaver for hospital staff as well as a more accurate way of tracking than traditional pen and paper. Paired with our extra features such as displaying IV fluid intake, dripping rate of an infusion, time remaining until an IV runs out and toe-to-room temperature gradient monitoring, we believe we can offer a comprehensive tool that could save hospital staff precious time and offer invaluable data for selecting patients at risk.

Feasibility and financials

We’ve developed a fully functioning prototype, both on the hardware and software side which is sending data to an IoT cloud as well as into the InterSystems FHIR platform. Implementation into the ICUs could be done using any open system. Our cost for the prototype was 27EUR. If we would get our product to 25 % of all ICU beds in the Czech republic, then after the first year we could get profitability of 27 % with one device cost of 150 euro including staff, development, and certification costs.

Authors

• Ľuboš Repka
• Tom Kuna
• Vasil Kostin