Healthy.io, the global leader in transforming the smartphone camera into a medical device, announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has awarded the company three patents for the technology behind its Minuteful Wound app. The app enables nurses and healthcare assistants to scan chronic wounds using a standard smartphone camera, with the simple process of shooting an ordinary five-second video. Following this scan, the app runs a set of computer-vision and deep-learning algorithms to analyze the data and translate it into clinical outputs. These include a 3D reconstruction of the wound area, a breakdown of the state of the tissues, and the exact size of the wound.
This timely and valuable information, along with a visual record of the wound over time, can be found on a secure portal, enabling effective clinical collaboration for the caring team. When needed, care teams can then share this digital wound analysis with a specialist, ensuring the patient receives the most appropriate treatment. Now, for the first time with Minuteful Wound, specialists get remote access to accurate and relevant data about the wounds of their patients— improving analysis, reducing healing times, and saving money. The technology also flags deteriorating wounds, alerts the care team, and enables earlier intervention.
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The patents are a major step in Healthy.io’s strategic plan to expand its growth in the U.S. and scale its computer-vision and smartphone-enabled medical services. They also solidify the company’s unique wound-management services offering by safeguarding every aspect of the technology behind Minuteful Wound. Recently the company announced several commercial partnerships for Minuteful Kidney, the first and only FDA-cleared, smartphone-powered home kidney test.
“Receiving these patents will help Healthy.io drive growth in U.S. markets,” said Yonatan Adiri, CEO and Founder of Healthy.io. “This smartphone-powered technology gives clinicians a better and more efficient care option by replacing traditional paper rulers and digital cameras with realistic, consistent images depicting the actual color of every wound, allowing them to manage wound care remotely, alleviate unnecessary burden, and improve their patients’ experience by saving them critical time and resources.”
The app has already been used by over 1,000 clinicians across the United Kingdom to make over 100,000 wound assessments, helping treat over 14,000 patients. By the end of this year, Healthy.io estimates that more than 50,000 patients will be treated with the app. Nurses who used Minuteful Wound to assess their patients reported 85% faster documentation compared to standard methods. The nurses also reported that the time needed for follow-up visits was reduced by 67% when using the device.
Healthy.io’s recent patents are in the domain of ColorAI, which uses artificial intelligence to process images through automated colorization. Two of the new patents concern wound detection enabled by computer vision, while the third patent focuses on the platform on which the images are assessed.
- U.S. Patent Application No.: 17/246,862: This patent licenses the measuring and monitoring of skin features in different colors, forms, and sizes, enabling people of various racial and ethnic backgrounds to be evaluated by the device.
- U.S. Patent Application No.: 17/482,856: This patent permits the device to track the wound-healing process by using remote image analysis.
- U.S. Patent Application No.: 17/647,005: This patent secures the process for rearranging and selecting frames of the medical videos.
Healthy.io’s broader patent portfolio includes dozens of patents in the U.S., Europe, and around the globe.
SOURCE: PR Newswire