Remote dialysis monitoring services are vying for new customers, as dialysis usage in differing settings continues to grow, spurred by the recent U.S. executive order under the Advancing American Kidney Health initiative, which aims to encourage home-based dialysis,.
One of the most recent announcements about a remote-monitoring opportunity comes from Graftworx in San Francisco. The technology company has begun a service evaluation collaborating in northeast England with the Academic Health Science Network and the National Health Service (NHS) Hospital Foundation Trust. That evaluation could result in studies that use the company’s technology “to assess patients on dialysis and those with heart failure,” Vascular News reports.
According to Jonathan Murray, consultant nephrologist at South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in Middlesbrough, “The range of assessments that we are planning with GraftWorx is based upon the premise that remotely and continuously capturing early clinical signals will enable our clinical teams to more promptly identify potential problems. Ultimately we are keen to evaluate if digital health–enabled data will improve efficiency and effectiveness of patient care and thereby optimise our care pathways.”
As noted in the item above, CVS would like to establish dialysis patient monitoring as well, as it embarks on its clinical trial with a new dialysis device from DEKA. Such collaborations could result in further competition for the large dialysis companies.
Reuters reports that DaVita is “accelerating its home dialysis growth by investing in home remote monitoring and a telehealth platform that make the process easier.”
In February, Fresenius received permission from US antitrust authorities to acquire NxStage’s dialysis and other medical devices. NxStage System One works with the Nx2me app for iPad to collect treatment information from the dialysis cycler at a patient’s home, allowing the patient to easily send it to a clinic and care team, NxStage says.
