Kalium Health was born as a collaboration between clinical, academic and industry experts and teamwork remains an important core value for our company.
When we first mapped out our pioneering vision to transform the management of cardiorenal disease through blood electrolyte monitoring, we found strong support from the University of Cambridge in developing our early technology and Kidney Research UK, the leading kidney research charity in the UK, in funding this valuable early work.
Partnerships offer a useful way for spinouts like Kalium Health to demonstrate early traction and they become an even more important tool as a business grows. This is because the right partnerships can accelerate market access and maximise the impact of innovative products on healthcare worldwide.
For us, a desire to forge impactful partnerships means we look for other companies working in the cardiorenal space – whether this is caring for those with Chronic Kidney Disease, providing dialysis to those with End-Stage Renal Disease or enabling cardiovascular medications to be better targeted and titrated. The experience of our Chief Medical Officer, Prof Fiona Karet, in managing patients (including currently as a Consultant in Renal Medicine at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge), allows us to identify and prioritise areas of innovation that have the greatest potential for clinical impact. In kidney disease, which has been managed following traditional approaches for decades, those opportunities are significant and our technology roadmap is designed to deliver new products in step with changes in clinical practice and reimbursement trends.
Our team is strongly clinically-led and transparent in our approach, and we strive to use our technology to deliver lasting advantage. We work in a professional, ethical and agile way with all of our stakeholders to maximise the value of our collaborations for us, our partners and, ultimately, patients. This spirit of teamwork is a key part of the way we work, for example where we look to engage with different clinical specialities to understand the real needs of healthcare providers before embarking upon R&D projects.
We recently worked with Fresenius Medical Care, the world's leading provider of products and services for patients with chronic kidney disease. Under the direction of our CTO, Prof Tanya Hutter, Kalium carried out testing with Fresenius Medical Care dialysis products to build up a pool of measurement data that may lead to new insights about real-world sensor behaviour as potassium changes.
The potential benefits of potassium monitoring could be enormous: therapy tailored to patients' individual needs from day to day, reduced discomfort and tiredness, and – hopefully – improved health outcomes that improve quality of life and reduce the cost of care.
We welcome the opportunity to work with companies like Fresenius as they have the infrastructure and scale to bring innovation to market rapidly, particularly in the USA which is a key market for us as kidney care providers increasingly look to technology to ease cost pressures.
Our leadership team combines decades of experience with our CEO, Tom Collings, having a track record of delivering ground-breaking technology and medical products to startups and global medtech companies . Under his leadership we have built a dedicated team of scientists, engineers and technicians who are focused on translating our technology to real-world applications.
This means that we are well-placed to:
Work closely with healthcare providers to identify opportunities to add value to their clinical workflow, cutting out delays associated with traditional bloodwork and supporting patients to stay healthy at home.
Provide physicians with real-time results, adding value to consultations and enabling the most appropriate prescription of cardiorenal medications.
Support pharmaceutical companies on clinical trials with frequent blood electrolyte sampling and remote uploading of data by participants.
Integrate our technology with medical device manufacturers to create the next generation of rapid tests and continuous monitoring products.
Our current and near-future partnerships focus on opportunities in the USA and Europe, where kidney care provision and reimbursement models are evolving rapidly. We are actively targeting collaborations including those focused on the clinical evaluation of personalized blood potassium monitoring.
Separately, our technology access program provides a way for R&D partners to use our core electrolyte sensing technology in other clinical settings, whereby we can deploy our low-cost, real-time electrolyte monitoring solutions rapidly to support new product development.
If you would like to learn more about Kalium Health you can find further information and register for occasional updates at www.kaliumhealth.com.
