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success story

Leading Medical Device Company Improves Patient Health with Diabetic Foot Ulcers

An intelligent digital wearable that senses activities and notifies the patient and care providers 

The science of wound care has advanced significantly over the past few years in terms of material and technology. Technology can now be embedded into supporting and dressing materials used in wound care management. It has enabled remote monitoring of the healing, promotes adherence to the treatment plan, predictive analytics through image and data processing, and delivers timely insights to providers. It can lead to improved treatment and care experience along with bringing down the cost-of-care to the health ecosystem.

Virtusa is a pioneer in connected care technology with the capability to deliver an end-to-end solution. We leverage our built-in accelerators for rapid prototyping, value, evaluation, and delivery of solutions faster to market while ensuring HIPAA compliance. A UK-based medical device company partnered with Virtusa to develop an Intelligent wearable device (bandage) for patients suffering from Diabetic Foot Ulcer (DFU) and a necessary application for HCPs (healthcare professionals) to monitor patient adherence to therapy.

The International Diabetes Federation estimates around 463 million people were living with diabetes in 2019 globally, and in 2045 it will be more than 700 million. Approximately 25% of them will be affected by DFU. DFU is an open sore or wound commonly located on the bottom of the foot. It presents significant reductions in quality of life for those affected and a substantial clinical and economic burden toon healthcare systems worldwide. For optimum healing, ulcers, especially those on the bottom of the foot, must be “off-loaded”.

Virtusa designed an underlying software, using IoT, Image processing & data analytics, for wound care customer wearable bandages. It supports HCPs (principally podiatrists and Nurses) in assessing the compliance of patients with a diagnosed and treated Diabetic Foot Ulcer (DFU) to a prescribed therapy – Off-loading – to facilitate better DFU wound healing outcomes.

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The Opportunity

With the urge to deliver a differentiated experience for healthcare practitioners (HCPs) and managing patients with Diabetic Foot Ulcers (DFU), the Med-Device Company wanted to achieve the following:

  • Create a strategy, design, and implement an easy-to-use solution for both HCPs and Patient 
  • Enable use of mobile, cloud, and IoT analytics to empower HCPs
  • Ensure security and compliance with regulations such as HIPAA and FDA, given the medical data's sensitive nature
  • Create an ecosystem of cross-functional services between HCPs, patients, administration, and caregivers to improve the quality of care and aid recovery
  • Guided user experiences to reduce the knowledge gap
  • Treatment plan adherence to behavioral change support for patients
The Solution

The client developed smart bandages to help manage wound healing for diabetic foot ulcers. These wearable bandages were powered by Virtusa's technology solutions to ensure patients adhere to their therapy plan and achieve faster recovery.

AI-driven digital solution

Virtusa helped to ideate and implement a solution that can support HCPs (principally podiatrists and nurses) in assessing the compliance of patients diagnosed and treated with DFU to a prescribed therapy – Off-loading – to facilitate better DFU wound healing outcomes.

  • Wound Management
    • Developed an IoT ecosystem to transfer longitudinal images of wounds and sensor data to the cloud using Bluetooth that assesses the progression of the ulcer
    • Foot Stress calculations based on patient activity – The data being sent from the intelligent bandages and analyzed in the cloud
  • Security & Compliance
    • Migrating the enterprise backend to the cloud to securely store sensor and image data
    • Manages the master list of sites, active healthcare providers, devices, phones, sensors, and patient IDs
  • Remote Monitoring and Collaboration
    • A satisfactory patient experience through an AI-driven technology that achieves precision insights
    • Notifications to the provider when the patient puts too much stress on the foot
    • Full-fledged patient engagement application with gamification
    • Provider administration portal

Virtusa's proven Innovation-as-Service model backed this initiative to design the prototype for delivering the prioritized use cases.

The Benefit

Using Virtusa's software in the wearable bandage helped the client personalize patient care and improve adherence to therapy and, thereby, outcomes for diabetic foot ulcers. The prototype benefits below stakeholders in the Healthcare industry

  • Patient
    • Drive patient self-management of recovery from DFU 
    • Enable patients to be more productive while healing
    • Minimize out-of-pocket cost
  • Healthcare Providers
    • Real-time monitoring and course correction
    • Remote assistance for accurate therapy
  • Product Owner / Marketing Team
    • Quick time-to-market
    • Align with the existing wound management product ecosystem
  • Payer 
    • Reduce the overall cost-to-heal by monitoring and providing on-time feedback
    • The nurses' periodic assistance is backed by sensor data measuring the patient’s device usage pattern
Virtusa can help your company leverage the power of AI and patient monitoring to realize outcomes from smart medical devices.
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