A tool for monitoring creatinine at home

Francisco Andrade and Adrià Maceira

Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Spain

Research

Creatinine is a crucial indicator of the health status of a person. Tens of millions of determinations of this molecule are performed every year worldwide. CreatSense is a prototype of a compact device for the accurate, fast, simple and low cost determination of creatinine levels in urine and blood.

Aim

Provide doctors with better tools to monitor the health of the patients for the management and early detection of health issues. Empower patients to have better control of their own health while improving their quality of life. Improve the healthcare system making a more efficient and effective use of resources.

Problem to Solve

More than 5 million people in Spain, and several hundreds of millions around the world, suffer some degree of chronic kidney disease (CKD), a condition where the function of the kidneys is impaired and that may have very serious health implications. The early detection and control of this condition –which may last for years without symptoms–, is essential since every year several millions of people die prematurely because of complications originated in CKD.

Creatinine is a normal metabolic byproduct generated by the body whose concentration in blood and urine is used to evaluate the performance of the renal system Nowadays, since the level of creatinine is one of the best ways to detect, monitor and manage CKD, people must go the doctor and then to a clinical lab to do urine and blood tests.

Current methods for the determination of creatinine are tedious, complex, expensive and quite often severely interfered. There is a need for improvement of this methods of determination of creatinine in a lab.

Innovation

The unique features of the device should allow the determination of creatinine outside the lab, in a doctor’s office or at a patient’s home, addressing needs of the emerging market of telemedicine. Moreover, this simple device represents a breakthrough in the methods for the determination of creatinine, since it allows the detection at very low levels with minimal interferences. Therefore, it is superior to anything that has been reported so far in this field.

Level of Innovation

The methods for the determination of creatinine currently existing show many drawbacks: they are tedious, complex, expensive and quite often severely interfered. In addition, there are significant discrepancies between the results of the different laboratories. The technology applied to CreatSense allows the accurate, simple, low cost and accessible determination of creatinine. There is no product in the market that can match all these characteristics simultaneously.