A Message from the ISHD Director of Education

Author:
Madhukar Misra MD, FRCP (UK), FACP, FASN
Professor of Medicine (Nephrology)
University of Missouri at Columbia USA

One of the foremost missions of the International Society for Hemodialysis™ (ISHD) is to promote education and research in the field of hemodialysis (HD). Since its inception in 1999, ISHD and its flagship journal, Hemodialysis International, has addressed the science and clinical practice of hemodialysis, an important mode of therapy that in the past had been sorely overlooked in favor of other basic-science/focused research.

As a testament to the importance of home HD, for more than a decade the society has been organizing 1-day preconference courses in home HD during the Annual Dialysis Conference, organized by the University of Missouri at Columbia. Although great strides have been made in recent years in hemodialysis research and training, there remains an obvious dearth of resources for home HD, for practitioners and patients alike.

From the beginning, the society has been immensely interested in developing a comprehensive, easy-to-use training program with an international reach.

I am very excited and pleased to announce that ISHD and Baxter Healthcare Corporation have collaborated to produce the web-based home HD tool kit, “Implementing Hemodialysis in the Home: A Global Perspective”. Indeed, this tool kit, which is, in essence, a “how-to” manual for home HD, was developed by a group of international experts in home HD and offers tremendous potential benefits to practitioners and patients.

It is important to highlight 2 important points: First, I need to emphasize that there is no commercial bias in development of this project. Baxter International was generous in providing an unrestricted grant to fund and support the overall logistics and coordination activities in developing this educational website. The company’s role ended at that point. Neither Baxter nor any other industry sponsor has had any role in the selection of contributors or in the development of content of the website.

None of the contributors to this project derived any monetary gains from this effort. All in all, this tool kit is the result of voluntary and generous donation of expertise, effort, and time offered by the various contributors.

Second, this manual has undergone rigorous peer review and vetting by independent reviewers selected by me and Dr. Chris Blagg, while he was Editor-in-Chief of Hemodialysis International. From the initial stages of involvement with this initiative, ISHD has maintained academic integrity and freedom from commercial bias for this project.

I believe, that this new toolkit, which now has been incorporated into the ISHD Website, “Implementing Hemodialysis in the Home: A Global Perspective”, will prove to be a valuable resource for clinicians and patients throughout the world. It will provide a means to address a void in this developing field where much still remains to be done.