Nutromics, a MedTech scale-up, has a diagnostic lab-on-a-patch that tracks multiple crucial targets continuously and in real-time, giving clinicians personalized insights into patient health. Currently, clinicians are hampered by insufficient and delayed lab diagnostics, with a standard of care that provides only a single data point hours after the test. As much as 70% of all clinical decisions are made using this process, leading to poor patient outcomes and billions of dollars in additional healthcare costs.
The company’s first target is vancomycin, a drug that is commonly used in hospitals to treat infections, yet difficult to monitor. Up to 43% of adults develop vancomycin-induced acute kidney injury and the mortality rate of up to 33% of such adults is a serious concern. The patch, if moved to the shipping product stage, could revolutionize clinicians’ ability to keep patients in the therapeutic range, improving efficacy and minimizing toxic overdoses.
The patch could prove useful in monitoring a dozen crucial drugs, proteins, and metabolites on-body, such as procaine, cocaine, gentamicin, phenylalanine, and ATP. It could bring a shift in patient care by providing trend information, which is critical in the ICU for fast-moving disease states. This could be a valuable tool for healthcare professionals, and we hope that it develops into a commercial product soon.
