BBI Wins Health Service Journal's 2018 Best Innovation in Medical Technology Award
"This winner was a genuine game changer," Judges say
SEM Scanner Also Named 2018 Most Innovative Product by Journal of Wound Care
LOS ANGELES and MANCHESTER, United Kingdom, March 27, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The Health Service Journal has named Bruin Biometrics, LLC ("BBI"), as the winner of its 2018 Best Innovation in Medical Technology Award for developing the SEM Scanner device for the early detection of pressure ulcers (also known as "bed sores" or "pressure injuries").
In selecting the SEM Scanner from technologies across all health care fields, judges for the U.K.-based Health Service Journal, which covers publicly-funded healthcare, said: "This winner was a genuine game changer. It uses physics to change the way this condition is identified and prevented through earlier treatment. This has a massive impact for patients across hospitals and the community and has applicability across all economies in the UK. It will save substantial amounts of money and time for the NHS."
Pressure ulcers are the most-reported harm to patients in the UK, and have remained stubbornly pernicious in all health systems and care settings globally. In the USA, pressure ulcers account for more annual deaths than the opiod crisis.
Before the SEM Scanner was conceived, nurses seeking to identify and prevent pressure ulcers had to rely on risk assessing patients and conducting visual inspections of their patients' skin surfaces. Once ulcers progress to being visible on the skin's surface, tissue damage has already occurred, risking the cascade of complications common to open wounds: pain; embarrassment; lengthy treatments; serious local and systemic infections, such as MRSA; and mortality. In the USA, complications from pressure ulcers cause 60,000 deaths annually.
Remarkably, wound care has suffered from a lack of transformational innovation. Nurses have until now had no objective detection technology to support their task of detecting damage that starts at the cellular – or invisible - level. BBI's portable, handheld device, the SEM Scanner, detects pressure ulcers at anatomical sites susceptible to pressure ulceration by sensing changes in sub-epidermal moisture, or SEM, a biophysical indicator of damaged skin and tissue.
Once the SEM Scanner detects a developing pressure ulcer, clinicians can intervene early and specifically with the goal of rescuing the patient and reversing damage before the the pressure ulcer breaks the skin's surface.
"This challenges everything we know about pressure ulcer care"
- Glenn Smith, St. Mary's Hospital, Isle of Wight
Speaking at the awards ceremony on March 8 in London, Health Service Journal editor Alastair McLellan remarked: "Faced with seemingly impossible efficiency targets, and having made every possible economy, NHS organisations need their expertise to maintain service quality within an ever-tightening budget. There is also little chance of the Five Year Forward View becoming reality without advances developed by commercial suppliers becoming an integral part of the NHS operating model. The companies we celebrate are those that have accepted the challenge to help the NHS deliver during a period of intense pressure."
The panel of judges, which included senior NHS managers, evaluated data from real-world useage at nine acute care and community hospitals showing that when acted on, readings from the Scanner allowed nurses to reduce pressure ulcer incidence to zero or near zero.1
"Nurses can get a head-start on prevention with the early warning from the scanner," said Jeanette Milne, a clinical lead for tissue viability at Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust.
"We reduced pressure ulcers in the ward concerned to zero during our Scanner trial – an achievement that, if we rolled out across our hospital, we estimate could save our hospital nearly £600,000 and release 1,420 hours of nurse productivity annually," said Glenn Smith, a tissue viability and nutrition senior clinical nurse specialist/patient safety lead at St. Mary's Hospital.
Virgin Care, which provides services to the NHS, experienced a 95 percent drop in the pressure ulcer rate during a service redesign evaluation of the SEM Scanner at Farnham Community Hospital in Surrey.2
BBI CEO Martin Burns underscored the significance of real-world evidence on the Scanner: "Our experience and analyses show that meaningful prevention reduces the burden on nurses and frees patients from unnecessary suffering while opening up beds and helping the NHS reduce costs."
"BBI and our nursing collaborators have already demonstrated that the NHS can achieve these benefits within a modern care pathway."
From Promise to Reality: Prevention Made Real
BBI has also been named as the recipient of the Journal of Wound Care's Most Innovative Product Award for 2018.
The award highlights the great contribution that nurses, clinicians, scientists, researchers and academics make to the development of wound-care research and practice.
In accepting the award, BBI CEO Martin Burns remarked: "Our goal is to help health systems finally achieve their long-stated aim of making prevention a reality. Working collaboratively with nurses and wound care experts we aim to massively decrease unnecessary patient injury and treatment costs through technology that can detect developing wounds when they are at a preventable stage. The data reviewed by JWC's judges showed that a paradigm shift in how we think about pressure ulcer aetiology, their prevention and the cascade of benefits to health systems stemming from prevention, is now being realized by users of the Scanner."
SEM Scanner is currently in commercial launch in Canada and the European Union.
BBI has filed an application with the Food And Drug Administration for approval to market the device in the United States.
About BBI
Bruin Biometrics, LLC, collaboratively modernizes care pathways with technology.
A pioneer in biometric sensor-based medical devices, BBI is committed to the development of point-of-care diagnostic solutions for early detection and monitoring of chronic, preventable conditions. BBI is based in Los Angeles and maintains a European office in Manchester, UK.
For additional information, visit www.bruinbiometrics.com and www.SEM-Scanner.com. Follow BBI on Twitter at https://twitter.com/bruinbiometrics.
About Pressure Ulcers
Pressure ulcers (also known as "bed sores") can lead to pain, disfigurement, infection and deadly complications. The National Health Service spends £2.1bn – four percent of its annual budget – on pressure ulcer treatment and prevention.
Across Europe and the United States, up to 25 percent of patients in acute care and long-term care settings suffer from pressure ulcers, which disproportionately impact the elderly and patients with limited mobility. There are more than 400,000 reported cases of pressure ulcer cases annually in the United Kingdom.
Complications from pressure ulcers kill 60,000 Americans annually, and all told, pressure ulcers cost the U.S. economy $11 billion a year.
References
1 (Lester, R. (2017) Real world evidence evaluating a novel early-detection device for HAPU reduction. eAbstract K2.3 presented to 19th EPUAP 2017 Annual Meeting, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 20-22 September)
2 Littlefield S, Kellett N. (2015) Results from a New Pressure Ulcer Prevention Bundle. Accepted and presented at Wounds UK 2016. Presented to EWMA Conference, Bremen, Germany, 11-13 May. 2016.
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