Seven years ago, when Christophe Cau, a nanophysics engineer in Toulouse, left his second stay in the clinic to evacuate his kidney stones, he did not yet suspect that this “painful” experience would lead him straight to the paradise of inventors. techno, the CES Las Vegas. He presents with his colleagues and associates the Uriki connected kitwhich allows you to do your urine tests in the privacy of your home, or in the office toilet, and send the results to your doctor without having to run to a lab with a bottle that is awkward to carry.
But let’s rewind. “For my renal colic, when I left the clinic, I was given dietary recommendations to implement in my lifestyle to prevent it from happening again,” explains the entrepreneur. But it was very general, not personalized enough. » So, what can you do to really improve your lifestyle? The scientist searched. “And I discovered,” he continues, “that urine really is the mirror of our diet. We find sodium when we eat too much salt, and urea when we eat too much protein. » And as he has a “Dory” side and never remembers his menus, the idea was, in addition to simplifying the urine analysis, to keep the memory of the menus by photographing his plates, as we do on a slimming app.
No more meetings, no more tedious food investigation
The Uriki kit is presented as a sort of USB key. Simply urinate on a strip and slide it into this connected reader to perform the daily urine analysis and transmit it, via the associated app, to your practitioner or to the dietitian nutritionist in charge of your follow-up, accompanied of your menus. No more lab, no more appointments, and therefore risk of cancellation, no more lengthy dietary investigation. The specialist consults the data whenever he wishes and provides “feedback” to the patient.
The development of the reader-analyzer took four years. It was made with four colleagues of Christophe Cau in the SME specializing in medical instrumentation where they worked, before sparking the creation of the start-up Iki in 2021. From Bordeaux to Lyon, from Abbeville to Reunion Island, twelve clinical practitioners are already testing the kit and have offered it to around fifty patients suffering from kidney failure or chronic illnesses, for follow-ups lasting a few months. In the “French” model, the clinic orders kits and system subscriptions from the start-up. The test has already made it possible to add, at the request of doctors, psychosocial monitoring of patients. “We do not give the same nutritional advice to someone who is anxious or stressed,” emphasizes Christophe Cau.
In Vegas, the Iki team is not targeting the clinic market but directly that of American individuals who, with their private insurance, are used to investing in their health. The objective of the small Toulouse start-up, with six employees for the moment, is to enable the monitoring of “600 patients in 2024”. And 30,000, on both sides of the Atlantic, within five years.