Taking Neokidney to the Top: A Test Session at 3,000 Meters

Taking Neokidney to the Top:
A Test Session at 3,000 Meters

When validating a medical device means heading to the Swiss Alps

March 10, 2026 - Author : Gaëtan Pannetier

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February 25, 2026 – Scex Rouge, Switzerland

There are easier ways to spend a Tuesday in February. But when your job is to push a dialysis system to its limits, sometimes that means packing your sensors and riding a cable car to 3,000 meters.
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That's exactly what a four-person team from Nextkidney's Lausanne office did last month, setting up a test station at the Scex Rouge summit, better known as part of the Glacier 3000 ski resort.

The challenge

Neokidney is routinely tested at sea level in Singapore and near sea level in Lausanne. But medical devices don't always stay at sea level. Patients travel. They live in mountain towns. They go on holiday.


At 3,000 meters, atmospheric pressure drops to around 700 hPa. That changes how fluids move, how sensors read, how the whole system behaves. To evaluate system performance across a range of altitudes, testing must be conducted under those actual conditions.

The mission

The team ran a full simulated treatment session according to internal protocols. For roughly three hours, they tracked pressures, flow rates, and fluid composition, using both the machine's onboard logging and independent measurement equipment including an i-Stat analyzer.
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The machine powered up, ran its self-tests, primed, and completed the session without significant issues.

The setting

It's not every day that R&D involves panoramic views of glaciers and ski lifts passing overhead. But rigorous engineering sometimes takes you to unexpected places, and this was one of them.

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Neokidney is currently an investigational device and not approved for commercial use.

 

The testing described forms part of ongoing verification. Performance characteristics are subject to regulatory review..
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