nir-vana innovation network

Private Hungarian startup offers an application to tackle lifestyle-related elements (like nutrition, fluid intake, daily habits and exercises) influencing health of patients with chronic conditions like kidney failure and/or type 2 diabetes to support patient compliance and to avoid deterioration of health. It can also support patients with obesity and also suitable for prevention, especially for high-risk groups – people with serious obesity, hypertension, insulin resistance (IR) or inheritable health risks.
Rather than being a self-help application, the application is complimentary to direct medical and dietitian services, also providing important information and feedback both for the user and the medical professional/dietitian, also as an app for prescription.

Key business clients are private and public health service providers (specialised on diabetes, nephrology/kidney conditions and/or obesity) to provide 24/7/365 patient education and get measurable, trackable health data of the patient.
The application can also be used as a white label software to be inserted/integrated into corporate health portals of large companies having a complex occupational health/prevention programme for employees

Key software features include:
• automatic menu plan generation with AI algorithm (based on the user’s health data and dietary goals, preferences and medical advice/instructions). Menu configuration support for dietitians.
• dynamic, personalised content recommendation (patient education content) – via the built-in, expandable multimedia knowledge base
• exercise and activity tracking (fitness trackers integrated)

The Hungarian startup is looking for distribution/sales partners or commercial agents to access health service providers from Western Europe, where digital health tools can be complimentary to traditional medical treatment or markets with high level of health awareness like countries in the Nordic region.

Potential corporate clients:
• health provider (hospital, clinic) and/or medical and dietary/nutritional specialists who can extend the application’s content database and being open to offer digital patient education and nutritional/lifestyle advice. Patient base with the above conditions (kidney/diabetes/obesity)
• an initial, 3-month pilot is offered to assess suitability of the product.

The Hungarian startup offers:

• an attractive commission level for the sales partner
• free use (for lifetime) of application licence for the first 25 patients (for assessment, validation and trial) in exchange for detailed feedback (from patient and medical team)
• discounted rate of additional 200 licences for the first 2 years
• ongoing technical support and specific support to upload the health provider’s own content elements (recommendations, recipes, diet configuration, exercise plans) to the application

Advantages & innovations

• artificial intelligence helps the user to get personalised educational content and individualised, automated menu plans optimised for condition management and care goals. • specific and personalised dietary support for kidney failure/kidney disease patients - menu configuration for specific dietary needs (micro-nutrient levels, fluid intake limits), of patients with chronic kidney disease, also considering co-morbidities and personal preferences • offers validated patient education content personalised to the individual user’s condition, habits and medical profile • expandable internal database of recipes, food ingredients and health advisory content for daily health management • integrated with most popular health trackers (Garmin, Polar, Fitbit) to track and analyse exercise/activities – more interoperability with smart wearables in the near future • can be integrated with health portals (external or internal) for employee health programmes or public health initiatives like Smart City/ Smart Health • rather than many competitive apps focusing on only one condition or aspect, the application addresses multiple chronic conditions, user preferences and lifestyle goals by using AI/ ML (machine learning) to optimise the user experience • That means that rather than use multiple apps to manage multiple conditions from a nutritional wellness perspective, which fragments patient information and acts as a barrier to uptake - patients need only one app to manage them all. It can go deep as well as broad in how it captures data and preferences around specific conditions.

Stage of development

HUNGARY

Partner sought

Type of partner sought: Sales and distribution partners or commercial agents with a digital health consultancy profile with contact/client network of the following organization(s) – one or more: • health institutions (public or private) specialized on diabetes, nephrology/kidney disease/kidney transplant, obesity, chronic care • large companies having active corporate health promotion programmes • health insurance organisations • dietitian/nutritionist specialist teams Task to be performed: provide initial support in the first 3 months of project: - identify and engage health collaboration partner to do initial validation and test with 25 patients: feedback, clinical evidence documentation contribution - establish collaboration with dietitian specialists to expand the content database of the software: dietary advice and recommendations, sample menu plans and recipes, health content for patient education In second phase (after initial pilot and content additions): - identify and engage health institutions (hospitals, clinics, general practitioners = GPs etc.) to add the digital health software to their healthcare service range - identify large corporates willing to provide digital health support for their employees for health management and prevention - identify dietitian/nutrition specialists to use the tool for continuous dietary support of their clients/patients