Peripal AG is a privately funded start-up from the ETH Zürich and the med-tech industry and is based in Switzerland. The team offers a unique combination of product development capabilities, a longstanding experience in the dialysis market, a successful track record of strategy, sales and marketing positions, and an excellent network in the nephrology community. Our mission is to develop and market support devices, that enable more patients worldwide to stay home and ensure a safe therapy and is complemented by our vision to allow patients to be treated at home and to reduce healthcare costs.
Approximately 3 million people around the world suffer from end stage renal disease (ESRD) and are required to dialyze1. Thereof, only a swindling small number of patients (12%) do perform the dialysis treatment at home (PD), if compared to hospital treatment (HD)1. The reasons for this situation are eclectic, but if we take a specific look at the therapy handling, the most common complications that need to be addressed are certainly the potential risk of an infection and the complexity of the transfer set connection.
A major reason for infections is the touch contamination of the transfer set. This most likely happens during the manual operation of the connection to the dialysis bag system. Patients that use twin bag systems have to perform multiple steps manually and with an open transfer set. This potentially leads to a Peritonitis episode and will unsettle the patient in the ongoing therapy process. If, due to one or multiple Peritonitis episodes, a patient is changing the therapy modality to HD, the overall cost exponentiate.
Furthermore, the current PD therapy process is rather complex and can pose problems, especially for people with disabilities and older patients. Breaking the frangible of the twin bag and affix the clamps to the tubes, requires a considerable degree of effort or is a possible reason why some patients might not be eligible for the PD therapy.
To confront this problem, Peripal has developed the novel patient assist device PeriSafe®. This breakthrough in PD connection could help to simplify the PD therapy and to make it safer. This will allow more patients to make use of the peritoneal dialysis at home and can therefore contribute to reduce healthcare costs worldwide.
Peripal has pursued a new approach how to cope with the existing problems. With the well-engineered PeriSafe® device, all steps related to disconnecting and connecting the transfer set to the dialysis bag system are performed within a protected area and can be manipulated by only moving a lever up and down. The manual contact with the open transfer set is therefore no longer necessary. Instead of the cumbersome process to break the frangible and affix the clamps, the PeriSafe® device masters these steps by just pushing a button. This simplified handling and the safe operation will empower the patients with more self-confidence and the ease of mind to perform the therapy at home.
With the new PeriSafe® assistant device for Peritoneal dialysis, moderate dexterity impairment, and many other complications are no longer a handicap to perform the PD, therefore, patients are enabled to start their treatment at home, can spend more time with family and benefit from more independence and flexibility in their life. However, more data on use of the device will be gathered in post market clinical surveys to measure the benefits of the device.
- FMC annual report 2016
Website: www.peripal.com