For older adults, the use of intravenous therapy sometimes can be akin to playing “Russian Roulette,” one health technology CEO warns.
His company, ivWatch, produces biosensor technology that monitors IV insertions and notifies caregivers of signs of failed insertion, which often results in leakage within the surrounding tissue.
ivWatch is looking to significantly expand its market this fall and to focus on reducing issues related to iron leakage from anemia, which can cause permanent skin stains, CEO Gary Warren told the McKnight’s Tech Daily on Wednesday.
Anemia is a significant issue for older adults, affecting up to 10% of the population aged more than 65 years, studies show. Patients can remain anemic for up to a year after a hospital discharge.
In general, a failed IV insertion comes with significant costs to older adults, Warren said. Bad IVs also can carry significant costs for nursing homes, or other senior care facilities, in the form of litigation, law firms note.
“If you’re a stroke victim, and you need to get TPA to break up the clot, if that IV misses the vein, you’ll die,” Warren said. “That’s akin to a drug dosing error.”
Approximately 9 million Medicare recipients receive iron IV infusions, according to NPR. Although ivWatch says that the needle misses the vein in 2% to 3% of those patients, that still amounts to hundreds of thousands of seniors, Warren said.
The exact number of IV failures — not accounting for whether there are multiple attempts — ranges widely among different studies but could be as high as 50%, one recent report states.
“The reality is, you don’t know if the IV is in the vein or not until signs of leakage show,” Warren said. “As you get older, your vascular system starts to fail. Veins are more brittle, more fragile, and they retract. It’s not great to go into the hospital with ‘missing’ veins and the nurse is like, ‘Yeah, we gotta find them.’”
The biosensor is attached next to the site of IV insertion and uses infrared light technology to monitor the amount of blood underneath the sensor. If there is a leak, the sensor is attached to a monitoring system that alerts caregivers to the problem.
The IV monitor was first cleared by the Food and Drug Administration in 2020; ivWatch claims to be the only sensor tech capable of monitoring IV success rates, in part because there are significant challenges to effectively separating data noise such as involuntary patient movements.
Although the company has not looked yet at directly partnering with long-term care residents or patients outside of hospitals, ivWatch is hoping to produce additional sensors for other drug uses over the next 12 months, Warren said.
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