Five health tech innovations to watch in 2022

1. Testing the water for post-op complications

Acute kid­ney injury is a com­mon and seri­ous com­pli­ca­tion that can devel­op after car­diac surgery. Affect­ing about a third of patients who have under­gone heart oper­a­tions, it costs the NHS an esti­mat­ed £1.2bn a year to treat. 

Rini­care, a Man­ches­ter-based team of clin­i­cians, has devised a risk-pre­dic­tion tech­nol­o­gy called Sta­bil­i­ty UO. This uses arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to analyse rou­tine­ly cap­tured data – par­tic­u­lar­ly urine out­put – from post-oper­a­tive patients in recov­ery. The plat­form can iden­ti­fy sub­tle signs of dete­ri­o­ra­tion and act as an ear­ly-warn­ing sys­tem to pre­vent dan­ger­ous com­pli­ca­tions from devel­op­ing. 

The sys­tem can also iden­ti­fy low-risk patients, poten­tial­ly allow­ing them to be safe­ly removed from crit­i­cal-care units to free up bed space more quick­ly. It has been approved for use in the UK and is being eval­u­at­ed in sev­er­al NHS hos­pi­tals.

“Acute kid­ney injury is a major con­cern for clin­i­cians. It is 100 times more dead­ly than MRSA and it’s asso­ci­at­ed with short- and long-term mor­bid­i­ty and mor­tal­i­ty for patients,” says Rinicare’s chief med­ical offi­cer, Stu­art Grant, a lec­tur­er in car­dio­tho­racic surgery at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter. 

Sta­bil­i­ty UO, he adds, has “huge poten­tial to reduce the inci­dence of acute kid­ney injury fol­low­ing car­diac surgery. Giv­ing clin­i­cal teams advanced warn­ing that it may be devel­op­ing allows them to take time­ly action to pro­tect kid­ney func­tion. This is vital for improv­ing patient out­comes.”

2. One giant leap for osteoporosis treatment

Osteo­poro­sis is a pro­gres­sive frag­ile bone dis­or­der that affects more than 3 mil­lion peo­ple in the UK. From the ear­ly years of the space age, NASA knew that its astro­nauts lost bone mass at a sig­nif­i­cant rate dur­ing their time in zero grav­i­ty. Its long search for an effec­tive solu­tion since then has led to the dis­cov­ery of low-inten­si­ty vibra­tion as an osteo­poro­sis treat­ment. 

Mar­o­dyne LiV, the first med­ical­ly approved device that can both treat and pre­vent the con­di­tion, resem­bles a set of bath­room scales with a mains pow­er sup­ply. The patient sim­ply stands on it. The machine cal­i­brates itself to their weight to ensure that it gives the right lev­el of high-fre­quen­cy vibra­tion to stim­u­late their osteoblasts (bone-build­ing cells) and inhib­it their osteo­clasts (bone-resorp­tion cells). 

Stud­ies indi­cate that using the device for only 10 min­utes a day can help to improve users’ bone min­er­al den­si­ty, halt the loss of bone tis­sue and stim­u­late new growth. 

3. You tube: ‘DIY’ substitutes for an endoscopy 

Barrett’s oesoph­a­gus is a con­di­tion of the gul­let that can be a pre­cur­sor to oesophageal can­cer. Eight out of 10 patients who are diag­nosed and treat­ed for this type of can­cer at an ear­ly stage will sur­vive it for more than five years. 

To help iden­ti­fy cas­es of Barrett’s oesoph­a­gus more quick­ly, cheap­ly and com­fort­ably than a con­ven­tion­al endo­scop­ic biop­sy can, Cyt­ed has devel­oped a test kit called the Cytosponge. This takes the form of a pill-sized cap­sule attached to a length of fine thread. The patient ingests the cap­sule and most of the thread. Its cas­ing dis­solves in the stom­ach after a few min­utes, leav­ing a spher­i­cal rough sponge, which col­lects a tis­sue sam­ple from the oesoph­a­gus as it’s pulled back up by the thread to be regur­gi­tat­ed.

The NHS is rolling out 3,500 kits in Eng­land and Scot­land. One patient who took a Cytosponge test as part of a tri­al at her GP prac­tice feels that it could have saved her life. 

“If I hadn’t done it, I could now be walk­ing around with can­cer,” she says. “The sur­vival rate for oesophageal can­cer isn’t good, so to know that I have the all-clear is fan­tas­tic.”

A com­pa­ra­ble piece of ingestible tech­nol­o­gy in devel­op­ment is focused on the oth­er end of the diges­tive sys­tem. NHS bod­ies are work­ing with Dan­ish firm Cor­po­rate­Health Inter­na­tion­al and West Mid­lands 5G on a pill-sized device con­tain­ing two tiny cam­eras. Once it reach­es the patient’s large intes­tine, this piece of smart tech will cap­ture and send images straight to the lab for analy­sis via a 5G net­work, deliv­er­ing what’s known as a colon cap­sule endoscopy. 

“Bow­el can­cer is the sec­ond-biggest can­cer killer in the UK, account­ing for about 20,000 deaths each year,” notes Pro­fes­sor Ramesh Arasarad­nam, senior gas­troen­terol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty Hos­pi­tals Coven­try and War­wick­shire NHS Trust. “But we also know that, if it’s detect­ed ear­ly, the prog­no­sis is good.”

4. A headset for a healthier mindset

Clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist Daniel Måns­son and neu­ro­sci­en­tist Erik Rehn have devel­oped Flow, a med­ical­ly approved home treat­ment for depres­sion. It uses a device that looks like a pair of head­phones to deliv­er tran­scra­nial direct-cur­rent stim­u­la­tion. This is a proven method that applies a tiny amount of elec­tric­i­ty to the dor­so­lat­er­al pre­frontal cor­tex – an area at the front of the brain that’s been shown to be less active in peo­ple with depres­sion. 

Well over three-quar­ters (81%) of patients see a reduc­tion in symp­toms after three weeks of using the head­set in con­junc­tion with a behav­iour­al ther­a­py app, which fea­tures a vir­tu­al ther­a­pist to empow­er and moti­vate users to man­age their treat­ment. This com­bi­na­tion “removes access bar­ri­ers and offers a unique way to treat depres­sion”, accord­ing to Rehn. 

“When we designed Flow’s head­set, we want­ed to change how treat­ment for depres­sion is accessed, espe­cial­ly a method that many peo­ple wouldn’t be pre­scribed as a first-line option,” he says. “Very few men­tal health ser­vices offer brain stim­u­la­tion unless the case is severe, yet Flow is very effec­tive at treat­ing mild symp­toms.”

5. Breast cancer testing on the double

A team of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence experts and can­cer sci­en­tists have cre­at­ed an AI plat­form that can detect vir­tu­al­ly imper­cep­ti­ble dif­fer­ences in the appear­ance of can­cer cells. These vari­a­tions reveal impor­tant insights about the cells’ mol­e­c­u­lar state, which can in turn inform the most appro­pri­ate treat­ment choic­es. 

Breast can­cer is the most fre­quent­ly diag­nosed cause of can­cer-relat­ed death among women. In the UK, there are about 55,900 new cas­es each year. Clin­i­cians using the PAN­Pro­fil­er image-analy­sis plat­form from Panakeia can receive infor­ma­tion to help them make breast can­cer treat­ment deci­sions with­in 15 min­utes, instead of wait­ing days or even weeks for the results of lab tests. It’s recent­ly been approved for use in the UK and Europe. 

“This excit­ing tech­nol­o­gy has the poten­tial to save lab­o­ra­to­ry resources and also to improve turn­around times for bio­mark­er results for patients with inva­sive breast can­cer,” says Sarah Pin­der, pro­fes­sor of breast pathol­o­gy at King’s Col­lege Lon­don.

Panakeia is plan­ning to devel­op its tech­nol­o­gy to tack­le oth­er types of can­cer. Its mis­sion to accel­er­ate the process­es of diag­no­sis and treat­ment is dri­ven by per­son­al expe­ri­ence. The company’s co-founder and CEO, Pahi­ni Pandya – a for­mer can­cer researcher – knows all too well how stress­ful the wait for test results can be.

“When I was doing my PhD at King’s Col­lege Lon­don, I had my own can­cer scare,” she explains. “I had to wait near­ly a month to get the all-clear, which was a har­row­ing expe­ri­ence. But I also knew what the chal­lenges were and why it was tak­ing so long, because I was con­duct­ing those very tests myself. It was a piv­otal event.”