Acute kidney injury (AKI) affects 1 in 5 people admitted to hospital and, if not treated quickly, can affect other organs. In the UK it accounts for around 100,000 deaths each year.

Using traditional methods, it can be many hours before the results of blood tests are available for doctors treating patients with this time-sensitive illness. However, with a new app developed by the Royal Free alongside technology firm DeepMind, results can be delivered in as little as 14 minutes, leading to much faster diagnosis and therefore treatment of this life-threatening condition.

AKI refers to when the kidneys stop working. This can be anywhere between minor loss of kidney function and complete kidney failure. Certain groups are particularly at risk of this such as those over 65, those with a severe infection or sepsis, and those with a long term condition, for example, diabetes. [1]

Tests for those with suspected AKI look for a larger than normal quantity of creatinine in the blood. Creatinine is a by-product of the metabolised creatine, an acid that assists in muscle contractions. It is naturally found in the blood in small quantities as a result of normal wear and tear in the body, but higher levels indicate that the kidneys are not working properly in their function as blood filters, so this is a good indicator of AKI. [2][3]

The app and specific care pathway set out by this research improves diagnosis times by using a panel of specialists in conjunction with e-alerts to provide real-time evaluation of blood samples. At present, this method of diagnosis hasn’t been proven to improve recovery from AKI due to the short time-scale of the study, but it is projected that with the significantly faster diagnoses that have been proven, in the future this could lead to faster recovery. [4]

This research shows that e-alerting systems could be the future in medical care, rather than the outdated methods of communication currently used in many hospitals to deliver results to doctors, such as pagers. Faster diagnoses save lives.

[1] https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/acute-kidney-injury/

[2] https://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/creatinine

[3] https://www.kidney.org/atoz/content/what-creatinine

[4] npj Digital Medicine volume 2, Article number: 67 (2019) “Evaluation of a digitally-enabled care pathway for acute kidney injury management in hospital emergency admissions”, Alistair Connell et al.