Portable Dialysis Machine Incorporates Microtechnology

A new portable kidney dialysis machine is being developed that will allow treatment in the home while the patient is asleep but will be three times more efficient than existing dialysis machines.

The company commercializing the new dialysis machine is using emerging microtechnology known as multiscale materials and devices (MMD), developed by researchers at the College of Engineering at Oregon State University (Corvallis, USA; www.oregonstate.edu). The commercial firm, Home Dialysis Plus, was founded by Altman Browning and Company (Portland, OR, USA). Because of the new technology, the filter efficiency of the system is three times more efficient that existing systems, which are based on 30-year-old technology, the company says.

Studies have shown that dialysis patients need less recovery time when they undergo dialysis less rapidly, over a longer period of time. Thus, by undergoing dialysis every evening while sleeping, recovery time might be reduced from six hours to as little as seven minutes.

"MMD technology is allowing us to reduce a filter that is more than eight inches tall by three inches in diameter to the size of about four sugar cubes,” said Michael Baker, CEO of Home Dialysis Plus. "As this technology develops, the possibility of an implantable dialysis device becomes very real.”




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