What is diabetes?
Diabetes is a chronic disease that occurs when the pancreas can no longer make insulin, or when the body cannot make good use of the insulin it produces.
Not producing insulin or using it effectively leads to raised glucose levels in the blood (known as hyperglycaemia). Over the long-term high glucose levels are associated with damage to the body and failure of various organs and tissue.
The terrible reality
According to the reports of The International Diabetes Federation, approximately 463 million adults (20-79 years) are living with diabetes 240 million of them are undiagnosed.
The total number of people living with diabetes will rise to 578 million by 2030 and 700 million by 2045.
Every 11th person in the world has diabetes. About 2 million people die from diabetes each year.
Diabetes caused at least USD 966 billion dollars in health expenditure – 9% of total spending on adults.
Complications and monitoring
People with diabetes have an increased risk of developing a number of severe health problems. Consistently high blood glucose levels can lead to serious diseases affecting the heart and blood vessels, eyes, kidneys, nerves, and teeth. In addition, people with diabetes also have a higher risk of developing infections. In almost all high-income countries, diabetes is a leading cause of cardiovascular diseases (CVD).
CVD affects the heart and blood vessels and may cause fatal complications such as coronary artery disease (leading to heart attack) and stroke.
Cardiovascular disease is the most common cause of death in people with diabetes. High blood pressure, high cholesterol, high blood glucose, and other risk factors contribute to increasing the risk of cardiovascular complications.
The presence of diabetes mellitus greatly increases the risk of PAD, and accelerates its course, making these patients more susceptible to ischemic events and impaired functional status compared to patients without diabetes.
People with diabetes need daily monitoring. They are in the highest risk group, as their condition can worsen in hours or even minutes.
Unfortunately, diabetics with type 2 suffer from Medial arterial calcification (MAC). MAC is a non – obstructive condition leading to reduced arterial compliance. For this reason, known testing methods for cardiovascular diseases are often unreliable for diabetics.
Kelvin Health’s solution
At Kelvin Health we are developing an easy to use and non-invasive solution for daily monitoring. It can be used both by doctors in hospitals and ordinary people at home.
Kelvin Health uses a mobile thermal imaging camera that captures body’s heat, segments the thermal image, and applies artificial intelligence to detect anomalies related to vascular conditions.
The results of monitoring with our solution and angiography come to the same conclusion. Adopting Kelvin Health’s approach can save money for the health system, and save the doctor’s time.
Kelvin Health would be useful also in an emergency context when every minute can worsen the patient’s condition. Research and data collection so far show that Kelvin Health can be used also for supporting information for every patient without the risk and the blind spots of other approaches.
We believe that there is a unique opportunity to help hundreds of millions of patients and their families thanks to our expertise in machine learning, the creation of a unique dataset with our R&D partners, and taking advantage of the continuously growing trend towards personalised healthcare and telemedicine!