The Royal Academy of Engineering has today announced Quanta Dialysis Technologies as the recipient of the 2022 MacRobert Award, the UK’s longest running and most prestigious award for UK engineering innovation. Joining previous MacRobert Award winners including Rolls-Royce, Quanta was recognised for developing the SC+ system, a portable, easy-to-use, high performance dialysis machine allowing greater flexibility across the care continuum – from hospital to home.
The MacRobert Award celebrates engineering developments that demonstrate outstanding engineering innovation, commercial success and tangible social benefits, and the SC+ haemodialysis system impressed judges across all three criteria. It is already having a dramatic impact on patient quality of life since it is easier to operate, faster to train on and as powerful as traditional in-centre dialysis machines. This flexibility also enables patients to treat themselves at home overnight, receiving more dialysis care than they would in clinical settings and eliminating the gap where patients go without dialysis over a weekend.
Quanta is already working with NHS Trusts and during lockdown provided its entire UK SC+ system stock to the NHS to relieve pressure on hospitals and ICUs.
Judges were also impressed by the enormous commercial potential. The SC+ is already FDA cleared and selling in the US, where the dialysis market is expected to exceed $12bn. In 2021, Quanta raised $245million to fund the rollout of the SC+ system in the US — the largest-ever private funding round for a dialysis device company.
The SC+ system marks a major advance in dialysis technology, which has seen little innovation in decades. It operates using proprietary single-use cartridge that eliminates the need for expensive and time-consuming disinfection between treatments Each cartridge incorporates a series of pneumatic membrane pumps, rather than the piston-driven pumps found in traditional dialysis machines. This provides highly accurate fluid management and enhanced distribution within the dialyser itself, which acts as an artificial kidney, while minimising cross contamination and bio-burden (the number of microorganisms living on a non-sterilised surface) between treatments.
Professor Sir Richard Friend FREng FRS, Chair of the Royal Academy of Engineering MacRobert Award judging panel, said: “Recent success comes on the back of Quanta’s considerable journey as a company. The team has been working for a decade to develop a machine that dramatically improves patient care and quality of life, relieves pressure on hospitals and showcases the enormous commercial potential that cutting edge engineering can unlock.”
