Innovation Origins: Digital biomarkers let doctor see how patients are really doing
With specially developed digital biomarkers, you can measure a patient’s health more objectively. This allows doctors to get a better picture of a patient.
“In the consultation room, a doctor often only gets a limited picture of how a patient is doing. Someone might talk about the pain they are feeling today, but not about how well they were doing last week. The young medical technology company Orikami has found a solution to this problem. Doctors are now able to measure how someone is really doing.” – Bert Seegers, Chief Business Officer at Orikami.
Gait analysis test
The outcomes are shared with the patient and the medical team. As a concrete example, Bert Seegers mentions a system for MS patients, known as MS Sherpa. “There are two important indicators in this syndrome, namely mobility and cognition. We have developed tests that specifically measure how those things are progressing. For example, how far someone can walk in two minutes. You wouldn’t do a test like that every day, but you would do it every week or every two weeks.”
The purpose of the digital biomarkers is to give both the patient and the doctor more information about the course of the disease. This way you can better predict its progression, thereby giving patients more control over their lives.
Pilot in the hospital
More than five years were spent developing the medical aid and getting approval for it. Recently, a pilot started working with the Orikami product at the Jeroen Bosch Hospital (JBZ) in Den Bosch. “We see that the pressure on healthcare is increasing. In the future, it will even become untenable to provide all healthcare. Therefore, we want to move more healthcare into the home,” says Hanneke van Heijst. She is project leader for Innovation e-Health at the JBZ. “Orikami’s app fits perfectly within our strategy. You can keep a better eye on someone’s health, without them having to visit the hospital. Orikami had already further developed the product and was ready for the market. That is quite an achievement, because these are lengthy processes that are subject to heavy regulation. Of course we are curious about how patients and doctors experience the app in practice. That is why we are running a three-month pilot.”