Leeds Diabetes Home Urine Tests Get Smart

Innovative at-home urine tests to be made available to patients with diabetes in Leeds.

18:41 23 June 2021

A medical tech company has recently launched an innovative at-home urine test designed to help people living with diabetes to determine if they have early signs of chronic kidney disease. 

 

Healthy.io is currently working with the regional innovation arm of the NHS, the Yorkshire and Humber Academic Health Science Network (AHSN) to make the technology available to patients in Leeds. The scheme aims to increase the traditionally low uptake in previous medical urine tests, known as the urinary albumin test. 

 

To date, 11 practices in Leeds are implementing Healthy.io's new smartphone device, with 1,500 agreeing to be sent the test. 

 

Dr Sab Gogna, the clinical director and GP at Fountain Medical Centre in Morley, which has already signed up to the scheme, said: “So far it has allowed us to engage with harder to reach patients and overall has really increased uptake of ACR testing, quickly identifying people who are at risk so we can follow up.

 

“Using the service has meant we can focus on maintaining kidney care even during these difficult times for primary care.

 

 

“The need for follow-up is key and does require practices to have a system in place to facilitate this in order to action any abnormal results which enable clinical evaluation and better care for most at-risk patients.”

 

Neville Young, director of enterprise and innovation at the Yorkshire and Humber AHSN, added: “Innovations like the one developed by Healthy.io are critical to improve patient outcomes and also address health inequalities by looking at ways to engage with hard-to-reach communities and ensure they receive the care they need, especially now that people are more concerned about accessing clinical settings.

 

“We can’t do this work without engaging with equally innovative GPs and others working in the care sector at this incredibly busy time and we thank Sab and the team at Fountain Medical Centre for stepping up to help improve the delivery of care to these patients."