Isomark: Detecting hospital infections can be breathtaking experience

By Whitney Beadle
For WisBusiness.com

The days following a surgical operation can be as critical as the procedure itself. All too often, the road to recovery includes an infection that can stem from the operation or the recovery room – and which targets an already fragile immune system, blocking the patient’s progress. Vital signs can quickly go from normal to critical.

The occurrence of hospital-acquired infections, or illnesses contracted while at the hospital that are unrelated to the patient’s initial health issues, affect about 5 to 10 percent of all hospital patients and result in thousands of deaths a year, according to Joe Kremer, CEO of Isomark. Isomark, a startup company specializing in non-invasive technology for early detection of these infections, seeks to “enable the current gray area of detection to become black and white,” Kremer said. “We hope to transform this process of detecting an illness right away from an approximate art to an exact science.”

The ability to detect at an early stage if a patient has contracted a hospital-acquired infection is essential to the care and well-being of those admitted to a hospital, as well as the healthcare system itself. Contracting and treating another illness while at the hospital is dangerous and costly.

The current method of testing for these infections involves checking for abnormalities in vital signs such as heart rate, blood pressure and temperature, a practice that is helpful yet expensive, time-consuming, and unlikely to show signs of an infection until it’s raging out of control. Instead of looking at vitals, the innovative Isomark technology instead analyzes carbon-12 and 13 isotope ratios found in a patient’s breath to detect infection. It may sound complicated, but for the patient, the process simply involves breathing into a plastic bag.

A sample taken from the bag of exhaled air is then inserted into Isomark’s machine where the results are analyzed. The whole procedure is so quick and efficient that it can accurately detect the onset of an illness before any changes in temperature, blood pressure, or heart rate occur – and even before the patient feels symptoms. Doctors and nurses will then treat the patient before the infection takes full effect.

The Madison-based company has assembled a team of cross-disciplinary scientists and entrepreneurs to move the system closer to product stage. Isomark hopes to initially make its system available to a hospital’s most vulnerable patients: those in the intensive care unit. Doing so will help prevent many of the thousands of deaths that occur each year from hospital-acquired infections. At the same time, hospitals will save more lives by treating the patients sooner, spend less money on unnecessary diagnostics, and use less resources, Kremer said.

While the breath analyzing technology has the potential to benefit all parties involved, Isomark still exists in the fundraising stage. Kremer, a UW alumni, entrepreneur, and now CEO of Isomark, became involved in the company about a year ago. He hopes to help Isomark raise the necessary funds to get the company successfully up-and-going.

— Beadle is a student at the University of Wisconsin Madison in the Nelson Institute and Life Sciences Communication departments.