We too found the “outside the box” thinking in Alexander Masters’ long read (Many life-saving drugs fail for lack of funding. But there’s a solution: desperate rich people, 11 March) interesting. And we concur with Prof Roger Bayston’s views on the problems getting innovative devices into commercial production, through regulatory hurdles, and into clinical use (Letters, 17 March).
These problems are compounded when the novel device is aimed at treatment for a rare disease or a small subsection of a more common problem, in our case the development of a haemodialysis device for treating small babies. This device, the Newcastle infant dialysis and ultrafiltration system (Nidus), was invented in response to parent pressure to “do something” when newborn babies undergoing major surgery (often for congenital abnormalities like abdominal or heart conditions) went into kidney failure and needed haemodialysis to keep them alive and allow time for their own kidneys to recover.
