By María Domínguez, Community Manager for Medicsen
Diabetes is one of the largest global health emergencies of the 21st century and among the top 10 causes of death globally. It drains national healthcare budgets, reduces productivity and slows economic growth. According to the IDF Diabetes Atlas (8th edition), diabetes expenditure came to $727 billion in 2017 and it is expected to increase to around $776 billion during the coming two decades. The numbers are striking as 425 million people worldwide, or 9% of the entire global adult population, are estimated to have the disease and that correct management of diabetes could have a truly significant economic impact, leading to a reduction of 20% on its overall expenditure.
On the patients’ side, diabetes management is a difficult task, as they must monitor and control their blood glucose levels in order to avoid serious complications. However, only 35% achieve good control of glucose, which leads to incorrect management of the disease for the remaining 65%.
Of course, all patients diagnosed with diabetes receive general guidelines – but the system struggles to take account of the personal variables that make everyone’s experience of living with the disease different, and that diabetics require access to contextualised and tailored information (on topics such as nutrition, insulin and exercise).
Current diabetes treatments for patients rely on an insulin pump with cannulas inserted through the skin (which is the closest thing to an artificial pancreas at the moment), manual injections (often described by the recipients as a ‘pain in the neck’), and lifestyle intervention (nutrition and exercise) to rely on a proper control of glucose levels. However, this can adversely impact quality of life, and is often at odds with a patient’s daily routine and engenders a ‘feeling of disease’.
Medicsen was founded with the main objective of improving patients’ quality of life in mind. Our story started in a health centre, when a 10-year-old girl rejected the insulin pump in front of our CEO. She explained that she struggled with the cannula pump as it affected her life physically and emotionally, and that diabetes prevented her from getting involved in certain activities like the rest of the children – such as attending birthday parties. It also affected her parents as they were in a state of constant worry, unable to know what was good or bad for her. They were also forced to make uninformed choices and constantly adapt their daily routine to the disease.
To this day, our main objective remains in our DNA, together with the goal of leading the transformation movement in the current market allowing a sustainable paradigm shift in the monitoring, administration and management of diabetes and other major global chronic diseases treatments. We embrace the technological revolution in the healthcare system – Medicsen was founded on those grounds, and we constantly develop our own disruptive innovations. We believe that digital systems will have a major impact in our daily lives, and that we will rely on artificial intelligence (AI) to solve common needs – so why not utilise these tools to address one of the most concerning issues within the current medical system?
As a result, Medicsen has developed a closed-circuit system for the intelligent management of diabetes, creating the first non-invasive artificial pancreas by combining an automatic and needle-free drug delivery device in the shape of a patch with digital/mobile interfaces (the Medicsen app). This allows suitable access to relevant personalised data (disease and lifestyle-related), chatbot interfaces and a predictive and preventive automatic algorithm (AI), creating a lifestyle coach based on estimated future glucose levels and individual behaviour intervention.
Moreover, the app helps patients to self-navigate the healthcare system and manage their own health in an easy-to-use way, reducing friction and increasing interaction between patients and the healthcare provider. It also assists in improving the patient’s education and control of the disease, while reducing costs, tackling the issue by innovatively revolutionising diabetes and chronic disease management in a more proactive, personalised and self-managed manner.
So far, we have been able to prove the value of our algorithms when analysing risk for the patients and helping with daily diabetes management. In fact, we’re doing business with private insurance companies regarding the potential of our technology to reduce the risk of managing patients that were not insurable before, such as diabetics.
Our drug delivery device has been validated in laboratory tests, proving to increase absorption of big molecules through the skin thanks to the micropores the device creates. And it’s safe because those micropores disappear once the device is stopped. The drug delivery patch is now ready for human in vivo trials, which will commence as soon as we achieve the funding to conduct testing.
In the near future, it’s our aspiration to become the worldwide leaders in diabetes management and the treatment of chronic conditions, innovating in other diseases and building medical devices to improve patients’ quality of life. We’re not trying to disrupt the established market of sensors and drugs; we’re opening a space in the drug delivery market with an innovative needle-free device.
We know it’s a difficult task, but we believe that it’s worth it. We’re always looking for new opportunities to continue learning and improving in business, technology, science and innovation. For example, Medicsen is currently participating in Propel@YH, the Yorkshire and Humber region’s first digital health accelerator. This Leeds-based programme is delivered by the Yorkshire & Humber AHSN (Academic Health Science Network) in partnership with mHabitat, and is helping us to navigate the complex healthcare landscape and build an NHS-relevant business case.
No dream is too big, and we’ll keep working hard in order to help shape the use of technology in medicine.