Dr. John Sedor, from the Cleveland Clinic as the Chair of the KidneyX Steering Committee, spoke at the Technology Transfer Society D.C’s https://t2sdc.org virtual Tech Transfer & Innovation Forum Series.
He discussed the Kidney Innovation Accelerator (KidneyX), a public-private partnership between HHS an ASN https://asn-online.org, along with details on the recently announced KidneyX COVID-19 Kidney Care Challenge.
Dr. Sedor was appointed Chair of the KidneyX Steering Committee, a public-private partnership to drive innovation in prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of kidney diseases. The goal is to promote collaboration between patients, health professionals, innovators, industry, and government to improve the quality of life for people living with kidney diseases.
Dr. Sedor said, “Unless we encourage investment and innovation and open pathways to commercialization for new technologies and therapies, patients will continue to suffer while waiting for better outcomes.”
KidneyX established in 2018, is looking to accelerate development of innovative solutions to prevent, diagnose, and/or treat kidney diseases. To do this, KidneyX is funding promising innovators through a series of innovation prize competitions.
For example, KidneyX launched the Artificial Kidney Prize, a competition to accelerate artificial kidney development towards human clinical trials. The $10 million Artificial Kidney Prize is currently accepting Phase 1 submission until March 24, 2021.
Just recently, on November 6, 2020, HHS and ASN lunched the KidneyX COVID-19 Care Challenge https://kidneyx.org/PrizeCompetitions/covid-19kidneycarechallenge. As for the $300,000 Challenge, each winner will receive $20,000, to find solutions to reduce the transmission of coronavirus among people with kidney disease, and/or reduce the risk of kidney damage among people affected by the virus.
The KidneyX COVID-19 Care Challenge seeks to identify replicable solutions from providers, staff, patients, and caregivers and share the solutions across healthcare communities. Solutions may address but are not limited to data collection and dissemination, patient management and monitoring, education, training, communications, supply chain and resource management, and care setting logistics. Round 3 of the KidneyX COVID-19 Kidney Care Challenge is potentially due to start February 17, 2021 with submissions ending March 17, 2021.