England's Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust Hospital at Home team has reduced the number of home visits by 22 percent after deploying the AI-enabled wearable from Scottish start-up Current, formerly known as snap40, to monitor patients remotely after they are discharged from hospital.

Current said the trust’s team, including nurses and physiotherapists, was trained to use the solution in less than an hour. Staff identify patients that can be managed at home and then link them to Current, receiving two wearables, a Homehub and a charger. They are instructed to plug in the Homehub to receive WiFi in their home and securely transmit data using a cellular network.

The wearable, which is worn on the upper arm, collects vital signs continually with what the company describes as “ICU-level accuracy”. Its AI platform analyses data to offer insights about the user’s health, alerting staff when showing signs of deterioration through the Current mobile app that the Hospital at Home team has access to.

“We effectively took the ICU monitor and made that a wireless wearable that could be worn by essentially anyone, and what we’re then trying to do with all of the information we get from that device is work out who is at highest risk and direct clinical attention to them at a far earlier point,” CEO and co-founder Christopher McCann told MobiHealthNews. “We’re effectively trying to flip the healthcare model around from reactive to proactive.”

The agreement between Current and the trust was signed in early January, and the initial plan was to focus on patients with respiratory disease, but it was soon expanded to all those within the service.

“The value of Current was demonstrated in our very first patient – a chronically unwell patient who suffered a decline in oxygen saturation, which Current detected sooner than standard care would have caught it, letting us intervene earlier and in the patient’s home,” said Neil Perry, the trust’s chief information officer. “With Current, we’ve seen the ability to deliver intervention at a far earlier point and prevent hospital readmission.”

McCann announced in July last year that the company had closed an $8m seed funding round led by ADV, with participation from MMC Ventures and other private investors. The company rebranded as Current earlier this month.