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Kidney Health Initiative offers patient, innovator resources on artificial kidney development
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Continuing the focus on artificial kidney development put forth by the current administration’s plan to treat kidney disease, The American Society of Nephrology’s Kidney Health Initiative has produced two resources for both patients and innovators.
“At a time of national attention on kidney diseases, patient-focused drug and device development is all the more important to obtaining outcomes that are important to patients and their families,” Raymond C. Harris, MD, co-chair of KHI, said in an ASN press release. “As a public-private partnership between ASN and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, KHI’s work provides an important bridge between basic science and clinical care.”
According to the release, these new resources arise from an earlier project entitled “Technology Roadmap for Innovative Approaches to Renal Replacement Therapy” also known as the RRT Technology Roadmap, which also helped form the Redesign Dialysis prize competition by KidneyX.
The resource for potential artificial kidney developers, Fostering Innovation in Fluid Management, outlines patient priorities, currently available devices and techniques, challenges and design specifications related to fluid management technology.
“Fluid management is a critical component of current dialysis treatment and must be addressed in any artificial kidney,” Derek Forfang, co-chair of KHI Workgroup, said in the release. “People with kidney disease deserve to see the kind of advances in fluid management that we see in continuous blood glucose monitors and fitness trackers.”
The other resource is tailored to patients, according to the release, and is meant to make the technical document accessible to those with kidney diseases by describing how the kidney care community is committed to bettering treatment options.
Dave White, chair of the KHI Patient and Family Partnership Council, elaborated on the tool, noting that: “Bringing innovative renal replacement therapies to people living with kidney failure requires their active engagement and involvement. The patient edition of the RRT Technology Roadmap provides insights into the kinds of new treatment devices, from dialysis to artificial kidneys, that could become available to them as well as to future kidney patients. As new technologies become available, patients and their families need to be educated, aware and engaged in order to make the best choice for their treatment.”
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