Hemodialysis (HD) is a critical, life-sustaining procedure. However, new innovations are needed to achieve better patient health, higher quality of life/experience, reduced economic cost of care (i.e., more effective use of taxpayer and patient funds), and improved environmental impact.  Personalized Hemodialysis (PHD) is a novel technology that addresses each of these points.

The idea behind PHD is that each patient’s physiology is uniquely responsive to HD treatment, including: (i) variances in the rate of solute transfer between body compartments, (ii)  rate of solute extraction in the dialysate, (iii) changes in body fluid composition and osmolality, and several others.   Opportunities exist for HD treatments to account for these patient-to-patient differences. In current HD treatments, blood and dialysate are usually flowed at fixed flow rates through a dialyzer with a (generally) fixed dialysate composition and ultrafiltration rate.  This leads to rapid urea and small molecule removal at the beginning of an HD treatment, and this clearance rate decreases over the course of treatment.  PHD technology represents a new approach to HD treatment where spent dialysate (i.e., waste dialysate) molecular composition and osmolality are monitored continuously in real-time to respond to the individual patient’s dialysis process, and these data are combined with patient biofeedback (i.e., health and well-being during the HD treatment).  These then inform an automated process controller that adjusts the dialysate flow rate of HD treatments to optimize removal of solutes across all sizes and protein binding states while minimizing osmotic shifts and conserving use of dialysate.  With PHD we are able to (i) specifically control and maintain the rate at which patients’ clear urea and other small molecules over an entire treatment and (ii) conserve up to 50% of the dialysate needed for a single HD treatment.

The Rametrix® Technology, Inc. Team of engineers, physicians, and research scientists has already made significant strides in developing a PHD technology prototype.  The system is designed to work with any current HD machine and does not interfere with current standard HD treatment or patient care.

More information found at “Personalized Hemodialysis (PHD): An online treatment monitoring and adjustment system“.