Get ready for the healing power of data and algorithms. Fresenius Medical Care is on the verge of tapping a vast new resource that will produce novel insights and, in the process, change renal care as we know it. Connected care will make it possible to tailor therapies to individual patients, help academics decode the warning signs and underlying causes of renal disease, and empower pharmaceutical companies to speed up the development of new, life-saving drugs.

“We are at the beginning of a fundamental improvement in health and kidney care. Digital technologies bring rapid and major changes and hold great promise for patients, physicians and researchers,” says Kirill Koulechov, Senior Vice President for Global Research and Development in the area of machines and digital solutions at Fresenius Medical Care.

“Consumers have become used to simple, intuitive tools and software that make their lives easier, and the same is happening in health care as digital solutions become an integral part of it.” The overarching goal, according to Koulechov, is to better connect people at the point of care and in home care scenarios for improved outcomes and lower costs.

Patients who donate a blood or saliva sample for DNA sequencing are doing their part to advance the science of renal therapies. Their reason to participate is to help others down the road, perhaps even their own family members, as kidney disease is sometimes hereditary.

Augmenting the genomic registry with clinical data will make it even more effective in improving care. Pairing genetic data with the mountain of clinical data is the secret to catalyzing research into novel drug targets and therapies. As a result, the registry that the Global Medical Office plans to license to academics as well as pharmaceutical and biotech companies, will become a living engine.

Researchers will be able to examine the de-identified data to look for biomarkers that can tell them how susceptible individuals are to kidney disease and how they might respond to interventions. The goal is to reduce the cost and risk associated with clinical trials, bringing new therapies to market faster. Additionally, the data can be used to run virtual clinical trials in which patients are represented by mathematical models. The findings from these can help to improve the algorithms used in everyday clinical care.

Leaving behind the disruptions caused by the pandemic, the Global Medical Office hopes to sign up enough patients over the coming year and possibly see the first insights published within two years. The goal is to combine the genetic data of 100,000 patients or more. The Global Medical Office has taken great care to put the right privacy and data security measures in place to safeguard the genetic data as well as all other data they collect from patients.

While those academic endeavors will take some time to bear fruit, Koulechov sees a more immediate payoff from digitalization over the entire renal care continuum. Connected kidney care means getting patients involved much earlier and improving their quality of life with the help of digital care models that cover all stages of treatment, from education to transplantation. Capturing key metrics such as heart rhythms, fluid volumes and stress on the muscles and blood vessels that supply the kidneys can be included in a feedback loop that automatically adjusts treatment for the right patient at the right time.

Sometimes, meaningful digital innovation comes in even smaller doses. “Patients don’t want to face their journey alone. Depression is an all-too-common problem,” Koulechov explains. “It can help to have an app with underlying algorithms that ask you how you feel and rate your treatment, or to have friends and family do it if you aren’t digitally savvy.” It is another aspect of connected care worth exploring and can be an important part of assessing quality of life.