The Demand for Home-Based Dialysis Post COVID-19

Things have changed since the COVID-19 pandemic started. Patient with end-stage kidney disease are known to be immunocompromised. With COVID-19 situation, dialysis centres are high-risk area and Singapore’s dialysis centres are not designed for pandemic and staffs are not fully trained to handle such a situation. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, nephrologists have come together to set up protocols to manage the dialysis patients during this pandemic. This raises the questions whether there is a more efficient and safe way for patient to do their dialysis. This research aimed to study whether there is an increase in demand for Home-based Haemodialysis (HD) after COVID-19. This will help to ascertain the need for new business opportunity for Home-based HD in Singapore. The current machines available is too big and expensive for patient to do at home. There is opportunity for company to launch newer and compact HD machines for Home-based HD. A total of 109 surveys were conducted from 30 doctors and 79 nurses from between 26th October 2020 and 11th November 2020. Results shows that there an increase in behavioural shift to choose Home-based HD dialysis compared to post COVID-19. Home-based HD has been proven previously of its clinical and quality of life benefit. The uptake of Home-based HD is still low in Singapore. It is recommended that a larger scale of research need to be conducted in Singapore to further prove the need to increase Home-based HD modality.