Development Project
Background
The number of patients suffering from end-stage renal disease (ESRD) is increasing due to an increasing prevalence of diabetes mellitus, hypertension, obesity and aging of the population. Automated peritoneal dialysis (APD) is a successful dialysis modality that enables kidney patients to have home treatment with many advantages for their quality of life and reduced health care costs.
Problem
There is no exact real time system available for monitoring the APD quality and efficiency. Today over 370000 PD patients worldwide are struggling with poor and inaccurate information on their treatment efficacy, which is weakening their wellbeing, clinical outcomes and expected lifetime.
Market Growth
There are several major aspects driving the growth on global PD market in the near future:
1) Shortages in kidney donors
2) Increase in awareness and education on APD
3) Technological advancement in PD cyclers making them easy to use at-home settings
4) “PD Favor” public policy in many countries surges demand for home dialysis
5) PD modality offers advantages compared to in-center HD: Increased patient autonomy, treatment convenience for the patient, lower transportation costs, lower health care costs, needle-free treatment, portability and clinical benefits.
Impacts
Technological development in dialysis patient nursing enables improved patient care, and implementation of personalized digital care paths and reliable treatment modalities at home.
Patients are more committed to the home dialysis which increases patient satisfactory and independence, reduces public healthcare costs due to less hospitalization and eases the workload of health care professionals at clinics.
Implementation
The project is funded by the Sustainable Growth and Work 2014-2020 – Finnish Structural Funds Program (European Regional Development Fund) and the North Ostrobotnia ELY Centre.
It focuses on the development of a smart monitoring system (pat. pending) that is an independent device for evaluating the efficacy of APD. Our partners are PrinLab Development Laboratory for Printed Intelligence at Oulu University of Applied Sciences in designing and testing of technology, and Oulu University Hospital in receiving patient material.