HHS announces $2.6 million in prizes to redesign dialysis as part of KidneyX

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the American Society of Nephrology (ASN) have committed $2,265,000 in prize money for “KidneyX: Redesign Dialysis,” a prize competition that challenges the public to develop better treatment options for patients with kidney failure. This prize competition is the first in a planned series of Kidney Innovation Accelerator (KidneyX) prize competitions designed to develop innovative solutions that can prevent, diagnose, and/or treat kidney diseases.

“With this first prize, KidneyX: Redesign Dialysis, we are looking for solutions that completely disrupt the way kidney failure is currently treated,” said Ed Simcox, HHS Chief Technology Officer, “We are asking innovators like engineers and scientists to propose and develop new technologies to redesign treatment for kidney failure. We look forward to seeing what the best and brightest envision for the future of kidney failure treatment in the first phase of Redesign Dialysis.”

“In addition to redesigning dialysis, we are also redesigning how HHS tackles complex problems,” said Sandeep Patel, HHS KidneyX Program Director. “Innovators currently must navigate a disjointed and expensive path to bring new products and practices to market. KidneyX has brought together colleagues across our funding (National Institutes of Health), regulatory (Food and Drug Administration), and payment (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) roles to offer a more coherent and transparent path for innovators.”

HHS and ASN designed this first prize after a year of gathering input from key stakeholders, including patients, nephrologists, investors, and researchers through listening sessions, Twitter chats and two Requests For Information.

The Redesign Dialysis prize will run in two phases with a total prize purse of $2,625,000. The first phase, which will award up to 15 prizes of $75,000 each, launching in late October and running through February 2019 asks participants to design solutions or components of solutions that can replicate normal kidney functions and improve patient quality of life. The second phase, planned to run from April 2019 to January 2020, will ask participants to develop initial prototypes; this phase will award up to 3 prizes of $500,000 each. Participants may compete in the second phase even if they do not submit a solution in the first phase.

Mark D. Okusa, MD, FASN, President of the American Society of Nephrology added, “The American Society of Nephrology is excited and honored to partner with HHS to collaborate on the first KidneyX Prize: Redesign Dialysis. We hope to attract new interest, potential collaborators, and ideas from across the medical and scientific communities to accelerate the development of disruptive new therapies.”

Submissions for the first phase of the Redesign Dialysis prize will launch on Thursday, October 25, 2018 at ASN Kidney Week 2018. For more information on the ReDesign Dialysis prize visit, hhs.gov/idealab

###

About the HHS Office of the Chief Technology Officer

The HHS Office of the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) seeks to instill a culture of innovation at HHS through building innovative partnerships, harnessing the power of data and empowering HHS staff with the skills and tools to support a nimble government entity. The Office of the CTO’s open innovation pipeline shines a spotlight on opportunities for problem solvers everywhere. For more information, please visit www.hhs.gov/idealab