Sometimes a solution is so simple, we all miss it.

I knew Dr. Nathan Levin when he was at Mount Sinai and Beth Israel hospitals in New York.  Specifically, the director of their dialysis centers.  I had the pleasure of sharing many a dinner (always at an Indian restaurant, until I convinced him that there was a great kosher restaurant we should visit) and his knowledge.

Well, it seems that on a trip to Israel, Dr. L encountered a small firm (NUFiltration) and was mesmerized.

What is it that NUFiltration was doing?   Well, before I tell you that, I need to explain to you how the dialysis business proceeds in the USA (and most of the world).

Dialysis treatments rely on a very expensive delivery device- one that proportions the concentrate, diluting it with purified water (the diluted form is called dialysate), through a hemodialyzer (typically a hollow fiber membrane system), where the membranes keep the patient’s blood from contacting the solution directly, and where the poisons that must be removed from the patient’s blood pass through the membrane into the dialysate that serves as a sink and carries them away to the drain.   The patient’s blood, now cleared of toxins, is returned to the patient’s body.

Obviously the delivery device serves for manifold patients- typically three to four shifts a day (each about four hours) and lasts for several years.  So, on a per treatment basis, the capital costs are relatively minor.  The dialysate costs range from $ 1 to $ 4 per treatment.  But, the dialyzers (and tubing) can run about $ 50 each.

So, to keep that cost low- and still earn a (more than healthy) profit from each dialysis treatment, the dialyzer is reprocessed.  How?  It’s sterilized by a cleaning solution that also removes deposited particles and materials from the treatment.  This keeps the per treatment cost attributed to the dialyzer to less than $ 8 per treatment (often half that level.)

OK, now back to the main event.  NUFiltration was taking these spent dialyzers-  probably the ones that had already been reused more than 10 times, which means their effectiveness for dialysis was diminished), ganged a bunch (300 or so) of them together, and used them to purify water.  This device that NUFiltration sells involved pumps, instrumentation, and the like- but produces purified water in bulk.

That got Nathan thinking.  Instead of an industrial system, what would happen if they used 8, 9, or 10 dialyzers ganged together and let gravity provide purified water- or use a hand pump to produce the water.

So, Nathan and Linda Donald [who was also on that same trip to Israel; Linda used to head up a division at Fresenius (one of the biggest dialysis providers in the world)] decided that semi-retired life was ok- but a non-profit venture was better.

Thus was born Easy Water for Everyone.   The goal is to bring purified water to villages that lack electricity.  Their new system is called the NUF500 (d-uh- it can produce 500 Liters of purified water per hour), using 8 spent dialyzers.  Without a zap of electricity.

Where are these devices?  Right now, they are in Ghana and Uganda,  but they plan to expand the utility to 12 sub-Saharan sites this year.  That’s up from the 16 villages (total population 3611) that have demonstrated remarkable reductions in diarrhea since implementation.

Moreover, they’ve recruited a heck of team.  Ben Lipps (MIT, PhD, ChemE) who was one of the inventors of the hollow fiber kidney, whose company was subsumed by Fresenius (and for whom he then served as CEO and Chairman).  Seth Johnson (originally from Ghana, this Nurse Practitioner also works with Nathan and Linda at Renal Research Institute LLC- which is also a unit of Fresenius) and serves as Vice President for the organization.  Dr. Jochen Raimann (this MD-PhD is obtaining an MPH right now), also from Renal Research Institute.  Dr. Fritz Port (U of Michigan, where Nathan once taught), who was intimately involved in the US Renal Data System (that provided vital dialysis statistics for years) is another board member.   Rounding out the group is Ghana native, a professional in finance in accounting, is Daniel Sackey.

I’m psyched- how about you?