Level8 - An Interactive Dashboard for Hemophilia

TL;DR Version

Level8 is an interactive dashboard and planner for different Hemophilia A products

You can analyze the existing products and create an infusion plan for physically intense periods of time.

The app is not medical advice, but has an educational purpose.

What is Hemophilia?

It’s a genetic disease where the patient is missing a protein in the clotting process.

Whenever you have a wound (open or internal), your body starts an 11-step process to stop the bleeding.

For hemophilia patients one step is missing, and therefore the bleeding can’t be stopped.

The Good News

There are already multiple advanced therapies available, where the missing factor is substituted.

The Confusing Part

Like any other medicine, the substituted factor has a half-life and follows a specific pharmacokinetic curve. In plain English, this means the factor level goes up after you’ve taken it, and after a period of time it’s gone.

Following this behavior, I had some basic questions:

1. What’s the factor level in the body at a certain time?

2. How long does the factor remain in the body?

3. Which therapy is the better choice?

Level8 - The Dashboard

So I came up with a dashboard, where the curve is fitted to real bloodwork values. Right after the infusion the level is 100%, and a second measurement after one week (168 hours) showed 7.5%.

1. The Current Factor VIII Level

The current level (e.g. 32% in the plot) answers two questions:

1. Which activities are safe right now? (e.g. playing rugby with a 10% factor level is a bad idea)
2. Is a substitution needed in case of injury? (e.g. with 80% factor a new infusion isn’t necessary, but with 30% it might be)

2. The Factor Half-life

Each patient has an intuition about this, but I find it helpful to have a visual representation of the half-life behavior (the curve).

3. Which Product to Choose?

I can finally say that, for the time being, Altuvoct is the strongest product of the ones compared here.

It’s also worth mentioning the progress Sobi made when releasing Altuvoct: with one dose you get a better and cheaper product. Capitalism at its best.

Level8 - The Planner

The Planner answers the question: how should the factor be distributed over an intense period of time (e.g. a five-day skiing trip) to get the best coverage?

For example, one infusion of 750 IU on Monday (Scenario 1), or 500 IU on Monday and 250 IU on Tuesday (Scenario 2), or a split into 3 x 250 IU (Scenario 3).

In this example I would say that taking it on Monday (Scenario 1) is the best fit for the factor average, but splitting it into two gives you a higher ‘lowest value’ (Scenario 2).

Gaining insight into any topic empowers you and helps you make good decisions.

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