Champaign, IL (March 15, 2022) – Nephra has been announced as a finalist for the 2022 Innovation Challenge: Accelerating Innovations in Kidney Disease to Improve Health Equity and Outcomes by the teams at Lyfebulb and CVS Kidney Care®, a CVS Health® (NYSE:CVS) company.
Nephra is one of 11 companies that will present their concept to improve kidney health to a panel of esteemed judges on May 19, 2022, for a chance to be awarded $25,000 to further their work.
“We are thrilled to be participating in the 2022 Innovation Challenge in Kidney Disease by Lyfebulb and CVS Kidney Care,” remarks Nephra’s chief operating officer, Samuel Schapiro. “We will use this opportunity to accelerate the next stage of our development, which involves partnering with an ECG hardware manufacturing company and continuing to build a network of machine learning experts.”
Nephra is developing a non-invasive, personalized, and quantitative means to monitor potassium levels remotely with machine learning. Their preliminary model, titled K1, has achieved 80% classification accuracy in distinguishing between normal and abnormal levels of potassium. K1 is also able to estimate potassium levels within 0.7 mmol/L.
The finalists, co-selected by the Lyfebulb and CVS Kidney Care teams, brought forward an array of strategic, creative, and scalable concepts to make kidney care more understandable, accessible, and equitable. The potential impact on patients and their care partners as well as the feasibility and sustainability of innovations in the market were considerations in the selection of the finalists.
“Treatment options for those with advanced stages of chronic kidney disease haven’t changed in decades and the ideas brought forward as a result of this challenge are energizing,” said Jesse Roach, MD, Senior Medical Director, Health Equity at CVS Kidney Care. “We applaud the finalists for their efforts to combat kidney disease, and we look forward to partnering with the winner to improve kidney health for everyone.”
To learn more about Nephra, visit nephra.ai, and to learn more about the Lyfebulb-CVS Kidney Care Innovation Challenge, visit lyfebulb.com.
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About CVS Kidney Care
CVS Kidney Care is reimagining the future of kidney health because patients deserve care that helps them live on their own terms. Our unmatched patient insights, grounded in CVS Health’s connectivity, link data and clinical knowledge to create a personalized approach that breaks down barriers to care, including systemic barriers that have led to disparities in kidney health. Our end-to-end approach is flexible and customizable to help support a truly patient-centered experience. No matter where people are in their kidney health journey, we help them connect to an integrated network of options that make care easier to understand, more accessible, and suited to their needs.
We are changing kidney disease as we know it because the more than 37 million Americans living with chronic kidney disease deserve more than 20th century solutions. Learn more at cvskidneycare.com
Nephra 