Timex at the Heart of the Kidney

TS1000 plus peripherals can make life easier and less expensive for artificial kidney patients and US taxpayers.

Artificial kidneys used by dialysis patients cost $20-50 each and patients can use each only once. Each kidney patient must dialyze, using a new kidney, three times a week. Medicare, through our tax dollars, bears 80% of this cost for 64,000 US artificial kid¬ ney patients. At an average of $30 per dialysis, each patient spends $72 per month personally, while the government picks up the remainder — hundreds of millions of dollars for treatments each year.

So where does our TS1000 fit in? Medi Products of Salt Lake City built a system to reclean and resterilize artificial kidneys around a TS1000 with a VOTEM from Down East Computers, Greenville, NC, and Persona, Periconb and a special keyboard from Sinclair Place, Redmond, WA. The computer completely controls all processes under EPROM software direction.

Now kidney patients can use a single kidney up to six times, cutting their own costs to about $14 per month and potentially saving Medicare millions.

Medi Products president Dick Fife says they expect FDA approval of the device (priced at $5000) very soon. For information, contact Dick Fife at Medi Products, 240 West 2950 South, Salt Lake City, UT 84115, 801/487-8244