Professor Petre Cristian Ilie and Camgenium Partnership Story: Enhancing Patient Safety in MedTech

Harnessing technology to improve healthcare is a vision shared by Camgenium and one of its partners Professor Petre Cristian Ilie (Dr Ilie), Consultant Urological and Robotic Surgeon at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Kings Lynn, James Paget and Norfolk & Norwich University Hospitals.

Since 2017, Cambridge-based software engineering company Camgenium has partnered with Dr Ilie to develop innovative software platforms and apps to enhance patient safety and improve efficiencies within patient care.

Dr Ilie and Camgenium’s partnership story first began during the Covid pandemic when DermaCheckup, a dedicated platform for virtual dermatology clinics was designed, developed, and offered free of charge to an NHS trust to support remote patient care. The partnership between Dr Ilie and Camgenium has since evolved to include a clinical trial monitoring system called PuraStat, as well as HealthiumPro a fully functioning cloud-based web and app solution for improving patient care before and after surgery. The HealthiumPro platform is patient-centred and provides digital surveillance and monitoring of patients during and after prostate cancer treatment.

The HealthiumPro system was first conceived by Dr Ilie when he recognised an urgent need for logging ureteric stents in patients’ post-surgery. The Health Safety Investigations Branch (HSIB), findings revealed that there is no national stent register used across the NHS, and hospitals use various systems to track and log stent insertion. Paper-based stent logging is effective, but a combination of human oversight and effective systems is crucial if delayed removal is to be prevented. Delayed stent removal can result in potentially catastrophic outcomes for the patient.

Following the successful development and deployment of DermaCheckup, Dr Ilie approached Camgenium once again to partner with him to create an innovative software solution to address the unmet need of logging stent insertions and removals. The HealthiumPro platform provides a centralised stent database and the system streamlines the tracking and logging of stent insertions and removals. Enhancing patient safety and improving the management of ureteric stents, the Stent Register is an innovative solution that addresses the challenges highlighted by the HSIB.

The HealthiumPro system quickly evolved to address other issues in the care of prostate cancer patients, both before and after surgery. A patient app was added that enabled consent forms to be signed remotely and pre-surgery information to be provided to the patient.

Urologists must inform patients of the alternative treatment options which can mean a lengthy and overwhelming appointment for the patient. Dr Ilie recognised treatment information could be shared directly with the patient by leveraging technology. Sharing treatment information through a patient app enables clinicians to deliver critical information directly to the patient whilst also reducing clinical time in the hospital. Dr Ilie required a flexible, modular software solution that could evolve with the clinical needs of the patient and the clinicians working in the hospital. The solution also needed to be hosted on HSCN, the NHS private network.