Resilience and Well-Being Through the Lens of the Pandemic

Global Innovation for Kidney Disease: Leveraging Disruptive Technology to Improve Access and Reduce Cost

Kidney disease is currently a global epidemic which is having a huge clinical, social, economic and ethical impact in developing countries such as India. This is due to a combination of an increase in the causes of kidney disease such as diabetes, hypertension and obesity, together with an inadequate access to care (preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic), as also the high cost of treating end stage kidney disease (dialysis or transplant). As a result, it is estimated that 8 million people will die worldwide in 2020 due to a lack of available treatment for end stage kidney disease (ESKD), almost all of whom will live in low and lower-middle income countries.

At the same time, we also live in an era of unprecedented advances in technology that could be used to target kidney disease worldwide. Examples of such innovation could include the useP of digital and web based devices and apps for education, awareness and training, point of care testing for diagnosis, and the use of cutting edge advances in biology and biomaterials to create affordable portable, wearable or implantable kidney replacement devices that could be used at home to break the current paradigm of in-center or in hospital dialysis (of critical importance in this age of COVID-19!).

Moderator: Prabir Roy-Chaudhury (Co-Director;UNC Kidney Center)
Panelists: Vivekanand Jha (President, International Society of Nephrology; Executive Director, The George Institute for Global Health), Manisha Sahay (Professor & Head; Osmania General Hospital and Osmania Medical College), Shuvo Roy (Innovator & Leader;The Kidney Project at UCSF) and Murray Sheldon (Associate Director of Technology & Innnovation; FDA).