NEW PATIENT MONITORING PLATFORM ADDRESSES CRITICAL PATIENT SAFETY ISSUES TO SUPPORT NHS OBJECTIVES

Isansys Lifecare Ltd, the provider of complete real-time physiological patient status systems and services, has been awarded £1 million by Innovate UK and NHS England through the Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) programme to rollout an award-winning digital platform that when generally deployed will significantly improve patient safety.

The substantial healthcare contract follows the successful completion of two SBRI Phase 1 contracts in which Isansys demonstrated how the Patient Status Engine – an innovative, continuous vital sign acquisition, analysis and prediction platform - could provide low cost, continuous, high resolution monitoring for all patients in hospital, and create new applications and care pathways through data-driven physiological biomarkers, for example, for the early detection of sepsis in chemotherapy patients at home.

The SBRI Healthcare Phase 2 contract will now enable the Oxfordshire-based company to increase the functionality and extend the intended use of the PSE, which integrates a range of advanced medically certified wireless wearable vital sign sensors. This will not only meet the demands of healthcare providers for innovative, market-ready solutions, that can enable improved patient monitoring and alerting both in hospitals and at home, but it will also address crucial patient safety issues; to reduce the number of avoidable deaths and adverse events in hospital, reduce lengths of stay, and enable new pathways to keep patients out of hospital in the first place.

Keith Errey, CEO of Isansys, said: “There is a pressing need to improve patient safety, the way patients are monitored and how patients’ data is collected and analysed. Remote monitoring systems that use wireless, sensing and information technologies to collect and analyse patient data show great promise in delivering better care, improving patient safety and enhancing clinical outcomes. These technologies can also help reduce the costs associated with avoidable patient deterioration, medical errors, readmissions to intensive care wards and admissions (and readmissions) to hospital.”

The announcement of the substantial funding from the SBRI to Isansys comes as the Kings Fund, a UK health charity that shapes health and social care policy and practice, reports that the shake-up of the NHS implemented early in the term of the coalition government, but now largely reversed, was misguided, deepened the growing problems facing A&E units and left the NHS weaker, structurally “incomprehensible” and less able to improve care for patients. The focus now however is firmly on the patient and on improving efficiencies. Patient safety is the key priority and as the current Minister for Health has stated, safer care is lower cost care.

Figures show that around 1.2million reported patient care incidents occurred in NHS hospitals last year alone*.

The total costs relating to patient safety including bed days, ‘re-work,’ litigation and unrecorded events are more than £5 billion annually, a huge sum that is largely a wasted expense.

Mr Errey said: “Except for those in intensive care wards, most patients in UK hospitals are inadequately monitored. Even high dependency patients often fail to receive the necessary higher intensity monitoring due to a number of factors including suitable beds and nursing resource.

“Patients in general wards have their “obs” taken at long (up to 8 hourly) intervals during which time significant negative changes in a patient’s status can occur. Such infrequent monitoring makes it almost impossible to identify trends that might have been able to predict the patient’s deterioration.

“The PSE provides a solution to all of these issues, as well as allowing the patient greater freedom and security. By significantly improving patient monitoring and providing more robust and timely early warning indicators, the PSE can also enable healthcare providers to reduce the number of in-hospital avoidable deaths and adverse events, and to discharge patients earlier and with greater confidence.”

For the last two years, Isansys has been working with a number of hospitals and healthcare service providers to deliver patient monitoring services and patient status solutions based on the first generation of its Lifetouch system and Patient Status Engine (PSE) platform.

It was the success of these projects which helped secure the second phase of the SBRI contract. Isansys is now developing its second-generation devices and systems in line with the next wave of market demand and these are about to be put into service in several locations.

To find out more about Isansys’ second generation systems, please log into the website www.isansys.com or call 01235 436229 for more information.

* The statistic reported that around 1.2 million reported patient care incidents occurred in NHS hospitals last year alone, is taken from the NRLS (National Reporting and Learning System).

Notes to Editors:

About the SBRI Healthcare: (www.sbrihealthcare.co.uk)

The Small Business Research Initiative for Healthcare (SBRI Healthcare) is an NHS England initiative, championed by the newly formed Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs), who aim to promote UK economic growth whilst addressing unmet health needs and enhancing the take up of known best practice.

Part of Innovation Health and Wealth the SBRI Healthcare programme sets industry the challenge in a series of health related competitions which result in fully funded development contracts between the awarded company and the NHS. Unlike many R&D projects which offer grant or match funding, SBRI contracts are 100 per cent funded and the company retains the IP.

About Isansys Lifecare Limited

Isansys Lifecare Ltd is a new generation healthcare company that provides patient surveillance and monitoring services built on an innovative, low cost and scalable digital platform.

We are working with a number of hospitals in the NHS and other leading healthcare professionals and institutes to deliver patient monitoring services and patient status solutions using the Patient Status Engine platform and new generation wireless vital signs monitors.

We operate in a wide range of healthcare settings which want to employ new patient monitoring technologies and methods to improve patient outcomes and reduce costs.

For more information about Isansys please log into www.isansys.com

About the Patient Status Engine (PSE)

The PSE system incorporates the Lifetouch cardiac monitor – a lightweight and unobtrusive smart patch that collects data directly from the patient and analyses every heartbeat to provide continuous heart rate, respiration rate and heart rate variability. It also includes a remotely triggerable ECG visualisation function for set-up and verification that may also be used as an event marker. With the Lifetemp continuous wireless clinical thermometer, a wireless pulse oximeter and blood pressure monitor, a patient’s physiology is automatically uploaded as a series of secure digital files to a patient record. The PSE kit also comes pre-bundled with several apps, such as patient charting, early warning scores and real-time HRV plots, useful for determination of autonomic function.

Photos and interviews available on request