Monidor: Facilitating Hospital Wards with Cutting Edge Mobile Technology
Intensive care units and surgery rooms are well equipped with various medical instruments and machinery. Patients who end up in these departments are often in poor shape and need constant care. Their condition can decline rapidly which calls for timely interventions by the hospital staff.
Before the patients can go home, they typically spend some time in a hospital ward. General wards have a lot less medical instruments available. For example, infusion pumps can be almost missing from the ward. Even though ward patients are not in so critical condition, they still often need intravenous (IV) therapy. In fact, approximately 90% of hospitalized patient receive some form of IV therapy. The story of Monidor started from this practical need.
Mikko Savola, the CEO of Monidor, explains the concrete challenge:
“Due to high costs and the complexity of use, there are not enough infusion pumps in wards. This leads to nurses dosing the medicine by calculating drops and visually estimating flow rates and the total amount of delivered fluid. This, in turn, can lead to extended recovery times and even risking patients’ lives. We wanted to address this problem and our solution is a light and cost-efficient device combined with an easy to use remote monitoring software.“
Born out of a medical need
Four years ago some large corporations quit their operations in Oulu, Finland, which caused around 1500 skilled mobile and software professionals to enter the job market. Many set up their own startups, Monidor being one of them. While Monidor was founded in March 2015, the core idea was older.
Already ten years ago Antti Puolitaival, a medical doctor and later on now Monidor’s co-founder, had made the observation that there are not enough expensive infusion pumps around. In 2015 the different pieces just fell into place. Now Monidor has been selling its Monidrop® devices in Finland for almost a year. It currently has a patent in Finland, and patent pending in Europe and Japan.
Monidrop® gives a daily overview of the fluid flow and alerts if there are blockages. It is compatible with most common drip sets and can be remotely monitored. Moreover, it is also possible to integrate Monidrop® with existing patient information systems of hospitals. All of this is implemented with a good user experience and an intuitive user interface. This package creates a competitive advantage for Monidor and sets it apart of its competitors. Competition is found for example in the USA, Denmark, and South Korea. However none of them is offering a similar package; one is missing the remote monitoring application, another requires using its own proprietary drip sets, and so on.
Safer and more effective patient care
Monidor’s solution is affordable yet sufficient for a general hospital ward. The remote monitoring application’s overview screen enables the medical personnel to observe all patients at once – something they couldn’t otherwise do. Salaries and other personnel expenses are playing major role in total hospital expenses. In order to reduce increasing workload of the nurses, technical solutions are necessary.
Another aspect reducing the operating expenses comes from the compatibility with 3rd party drip sets. All patients have their own drip sets, which are consumables. If Monidrop® would require its own proprietary drip sets to be used, this would increase the costs significantly. It is estimated that normal IV set consumables are as much as 80% cheaper than dedicated infusion pump drip sets.
While the cost-efficiency of Monidrop® naturally has a positive impact on the hospital’s decision making when investing in equipment, Savola wants to emphasize that addressing a true user need is amain reason for their success:
“Our solution helps the medical professionals to do their job better. They can get more things done, without compromising the safety of patients. First feedback from the users has been really positive.”
Monidor’s funding round closed early 20.2.2018 due to achieving it’s maximum investment amount.
Visit our co-investment platform and view our closed issue’s > click here
Innovestor is a Nordic startup venture investor and provider of equity funding solutions.
Written by: Santtu Toivonen
