HHS, ASN define the value of KidneyX

Issue: June 2019

ByMark E. Neumann

Last month, HHS and the American Society of Nephrology assembled the first KidneyX Summit in Washington. The well-attended, 2-day meeting centered on issuing awards to the 15 finalists in the KidneyX Redesign Dialysis competition. The awards total slightly more than $1 million and the organizers are pledging $1.5 million more in the second round of competition, which opens this fall. Up to three winners will be awarded $500,000 each.

The $75,000 in awards handed out during the summit have no strings attached. If the selected winners spend their awards on bench testing a new dialyzer or a monitoring device for needle dislodgement and the product fails to get out of the lab, HHS and ASN aren’t asking for the money back.

Why do we need a public-private partnership incentivizing companies to develop new devices and technologies for treating kidney disease? Nephrology News & Issues lists more than 250 companies in our online Buyers’ Guide that have the capital and the marketing staff to develop, produce and sell equipment — dialysis machines, needles and grafts, disinfection solutions, water treatment systems, professional and patient educational modules, electronic medical records, testing strips and certainly, pharmaceuticals.

There has been an acknowledgment during the last decade from dialysis providers that the product offered to close to 90% of the ESKD population is inadequate. Fresenius Medical Care and DaVita Kidney Care are now pushing for more dialysis at home, where outcomes have been shown to be better for patients who desire it. More efforts at aggressive treatment of patients with progressive CKD — a logical place for intervention before the kidney loses function — is taking place.

The American Society of Nephrology and HHS assembled at the first KidneyX Summit to give awards to the first-round winners of the KidneyX Redesign Dialysis competition. The public-private partnership aims to incentivize companies to develop new devices and technologies for the treatment of kidney disease.

However, a HHS speaker on KidneyX does not mince words about the government’s view of renal replacement therapy. John Sedor, MD, FASN, head of kidney research at the Cleveland Clinic and newly appointed chair of the KidneyX Steering Committee — the group that distributes the funds dedicated to the prize competition — said at the summit last month: “The morbidity, the mortality and the burden of kidney disease on patients and their families has been minimized to the point where it is unconscionable.”

Sedor’s comments reflect what we have heard from HHS officials, including Department Secretary Alex Azar II. His father underwent dialysis and later received a transplant.

“We have to remember that the time is now. We have a short time to be successful and there is urgency that we’ve neglected for a long time in the area of kidney diseases,” Sedor added.

The resources of KidneyX may only crack open the door to better dialysis in the future; but if government, clinicians, providers and manufacturers are all on the same page, that is enough force to kick it wide open. Now, as Sedor said, is the time.

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Mark E. Neumann is the Editor-in-Chief of Nephrology News & Issues.