Patient-Driven Kidney Care & Innovation: An Update from ASN 2021

Announcer:
Welcome to the ASN Action Center on ReachMD. On this episode we will hear from, Dr. Maureen Brogan, an Associate Professor of Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Clinical Director in the division of nephrology at Montefiore Medical Center. Dr. Brogan is here to recap how patient-driven healthcare can affect innovation, a topic covered at the American Society of Nephrology Kidney Week 2021. Here’s Dr. Brogan now.

Dr. Brogan:
We're trying to see that patients are consumers, and they need to understand what's happening to their health and understand what we're doing. So now patients are able to read their notes in the medical chart. And they could also give us feedback about that. And they could check on their medications to make sure that they are correct in their electronic health record. We try to change the language that we use when we even document in our notes so that patients can understand. So we took away the word renal, which also means kidney. And we're starting to say such things as end-stage kidney disease or acute kidney injury. So we’re using the word kidney so that patients can understand.

There are some exciting innovations that are happening in the world of kidney disease. One thing is because of dialysis, there's a high death rate even within the first year of dialysis. So this year, the ASN had a kidney health initiative to come up with dialysis alternatives and xenotransplantation ideas. And this was all patient driven based on the patient's preferences. So they asked patients how they would prefer alternative dialysis machines that also could be worn. And even the xenotransplantation, everything was based on patient preferences.

We're also trying to push companies and hospitals to do research on patients with more significant kidney disease. Because a lot of times these patients were excluded from studies.

The other thing we're doing at our hospital, and other hospitals are doing this, we're having patients monitor their blood pressure at home and do remote blood pressure monitoring. And this has been really helpful in getting patient's blood pressure controlled overall.

Announcer:
That was Dr. Maureen Brogan sharing her insights on patient-driven healthcare, a topic that was highlighted during the American Society of Nephrology Kidney Week 2021. To access this and other episodes in our series, visit ReachMD.com/ASN, where you can Be Part of the Knowledge. Thanks for listening.