Today, there are over 400,000 patients on dialysis in the USA and over three million worldwide. The majority of those patients receive their treatment in a dialysis center three times a week on a regular schedule. This entails transport to the dialysis center, preparing for their treatment, waiting for their time slot on the machine, performing the 3-4 hour treatment (with large bore needles), then disconnecting and finishing paperwork, etc. before going home. All of this, only to feel like a train wreck for the rest of the day. Why? Because our natural kidneys operate 24/7, whereas a conventional dialysis system condenses this down to 12 hours of treatment a week. Put simply, in-clinic dialysis is inflexible, burdensome, and has a real impact on patient wellbeing. It’s time to provide patients with a better option.
Kuleana is advancing cutting-edge technology from the Center of Dialysis Innovation (CDI) at the University of Washington. This technology includes the ability to run a dialysis machine without the need for a constant water connection, saving over 50 gallons of purified water currently used per treatment. By constantly refreshing dialysate, this remarkable technology allows a dialysis machine to operate with a small, closed-loop volume of dialysate. It untethers the machine from the wall, enabling whenever, wherever dialysis. And to make this groundbreaking technology more acceptable to patients, Kuleana is developing a needleless vascular access technology to allow patients to safely and effectively connect multiple times a day, without painful and disfiguring needle sticks.