HealthchainStories
K-Control
Advancing Potassium Monitoring for Chronic Kidney Disease Patients
The need
Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) patients undergoing dialysis face a high risk of hyperkalemia, a potentially life-threatening condition caused by elevated potassium levels. In the Region of Murcia, the Servicio Murciano de Salud (SMS) identified a critical gap in care: potassium levels are typically measured infrequently, often only during scheduled laboratory tests, offering limited visibility into fluctuations between dialysis sessions.
This lack of timely and actionable data restricts clinicians’ ability to anticipate risks, adjust treatments proactively, and support patients (around 1.500 renal replacement therapy patients in the Region) in managing their condition. Patients, in turn, have limited feedback to understand how daily habits—particularly nutrition—affect their potassium balance. SMS recognised the need for a more frequent, patient-centred, and digitally supported potassium monitoring approach that could be integrated into real clinical workflows.
The HealthChain Support
HealthChain supported Healthcare Organisations in identifying their innovation challenges and selecting companies to address them. They worked closely as an interregional team to co-create, test, and validate a solution aligned with real clinical workflows, patient needs, and organisational constraints. The project provided financial and business support to boost the solution’s market-readiness and commercialisation.
The
Solution
K-Control is a co-created solution that combines a potassium monitoring device developed by Renalyse and a digital nutrition and monitoring platform developed by Nootric, providing personalised dietary guidance and clinician dashboards.
The concept behind K-Control is to enable more frequent potassium measurements, even allowing patients to test it at home, securely transmitted to a digital platform where healthcare professionals can review results, track trends, and combine them with nutritional interventions to ensure stable potassium levels.
The solution includes the following features:
Integrated Digital
Monitoring
A point-of-care potassium device connected to a mobile app enables secure data capture, visualisation, and sharing of results with healthcare professionals.
Patient awarenesss and nutritional self-managment
Personalised dietary guidance helps patients better understand the link between potassium levels, nutrition, and their condition, supporting safer day-to-day choices.
Clinician guided
follow-up
Dashboards provide nephrologists, nurses, and dietitians with access to patient data, supporting closer monitoring and more informed clinical decisions.
Structured Dietary
Support
Targeted nutritional content and professional support help patients and caregivers translate clinical recommendations into practical habits.
Impact
As a result of the collaboration and the insights generated during the pilot, K-Control began to attract interest beyond the initial clinical setting, helping to validate its future market potential. This included:
- Multinational healthcare company specialised in dialysis devices whose engagement contributed to validating the business rationale and potential integration of the solution within dialysis care pathways,
- Pharmaceutical companies, which expressed interest in defining new partnerships and continuing to test and evolve the Nootric digital nutrition solution in kidney disease contexts, and
- Healthcare organisations in Spain, which showed interest in the clinical concept of more frequent potassium monitoring combined with digital nutritional support, once the technology reaches full maturity.
Outcomes
Results and learnings were generated through a real-world pilot conducted in dialysis units, involving a limited cohort of CKD patients and healthcare professionals. Rather than focusing on long-term clinical outcomes, the pilot aimed to assess technical feasibility, usability, integration into clinical workflows, and early signals of value. The pilot demonstrated:
- Feasibility of end-to-end digital potassium monitoring, validating secure data flow from device to app, backend, and clinician dashboards.
- Promising analytical performance of the potassium sensor under optimal conditions, confirming its potential for frequent monitoring.
- Moderate to positive patient engagement with the digital nutrition platform, with patients expressing willingness to continue using the Nootric app for dietary management.
- Clear identification of technological and operational gaps, providing a solid roadmap for further development, validation, and future scaling.
Sustainability
Following the pilot, the K-Control consortium has a clear roadmap forward:
- Renalyse is focusing on improving device robustness, automation, and manufacturing reproducibility to reach clinical-grade reliability. They will pilot the device in another Spanish hospital in 2026.
- Nootric continues to refine its digital platform, strengthening usability, caregiver involvement, and resilience in low-connectivity environments.
- SMS has secured funds from a pharmaceutical company to keep testing Nootric during 2026 with CKD patients.
The K-Control experience demonstrates that early-stage digital health innovation benefits enormously from real-world piloting, even when results challenge initial assumptions. By uncovering risks early, the project has safeguarded patient safety and laid the groundwork for a more mature and impactful solution.
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