Our Solution

Similar to how your Apple Watch or FitBit tracks various aspects of your physical performance, our technology uses advanced methods to determine hydration levels. Historically, clinical settings have employed Pulse Curve or PPG tracking through wrist-worn sensors. However, doctors often struggled to generate accurate hydration readings due to the diverse health conditions of patients in these settings. H2O eliminates these variables, providing personalized hydration readings tailored to your unique physical state.

With H2O, monitoring your hydration is simple and seamless. Using a wrist-worn sensor, you begin with an initial 5-minute baseline reading that provides your current hydration score, categorized into one of five levels. From there, H2O continuously tracks your hydration, by monitoring changes in your intravascular volume, updating you with new scores every few minutes. Alongside these updates, you'll receive detailed insights on how your hydration level is changing and personalized guidance for fluid intake to help you reach and maintain optimal hydration.

Various techniques to determine intravascular volume and by extension hydration status have been used and tried over the decades. One of the most common, especially in the operating room and intensive care units, is Artrial Line monitoring. Arterial pulse trace, otherwise known as Pulse Curve or PPG are the different names for the same curve generated by the arterial wall while cardiac output, more specifically stroke volume is traveling through the arterial tree with each heart beat. Commonly PPG traces are captured through wrist-worn sensors, but other locations can be used.

Anesthesiologists and intensivists used PPG to estimate intravascular volume of a patient but it has been a poor estimate due to the various co-morbidities of the patients being measured. As such, a myriad of variables interferes with the form and shape of the PPG trace making it all but impossible to interpret intravascular volume with any certainty. Some of the most common variables are comorbidities such as vascular arterial pathology, cardiovascular diseases, medications that the patient takes, the presence of anesthetics, ongoing surgery, the low temperature in the operating room, ongoing intravenous fluid infusion, anesthesia, and many other factors that can significantly impact the results.

Sensors reading PPG trace work by emitting light into the tissue and measuring the amount of light either transmitted or reflected to a photodetector. The shape of the PPG curve is influenced by blood volume changes in the vascular bed (intra-vascular volume). In clinical settings, especially during anesthesia or intensive care, multiple physiological and environmental factors can alter the shape of PPG trace. For example, vascular pathologies can change the compliance of blood vessels, cardiovascular diseases can affect blood flow dynamics, and medications, particularly vasoactive drugs, can modify vascular tone. Anesthetics and the low temperatures commonly maintained in operating rooms can also induce vasoconstriction, further complicating the PPG signal analysis. Additionally, intravenous fluids infusions can create fluctuations in blood volume that are not necessarily indicative of true intravascular volume status. These variables contribute to the challenge of using PPG to reliably estimate intravascular volume in critically ill or perioperative patients.