such as Wegovy and Ozempic come with an additional benefit: they could prolong the life of people with chronic kidney disease, says Helen Giza.
FME’s core business addresses some of the growing number of problems that come as countries around the world wrestle with ageing populations. A typical patient treated by FME in the US is aged 65, male, obese, and has 10 to 12 other serious health conditions, says Giza. “If these new drugs give cardiovascular benefit, which the studies say they do, people will still advance to end-stage renal disease,” she says. “It’s not curing kidney disease, but it will give more protection. These drugs will delay the onset to end-stage renal disease.”
FME has 311,000 patients globally, including 206,000 in the US. It has 53 clinics and 4,300 patients in the UK, where it works “hand in hand with the NationalService,” Giza says. “The commitments the Labour government has made to the NHS – it’s a challenging task, and rebuilding trust is an important one. But obviously the cost of healthcare is, whether you’re Labour or Conservative, a challenging one to manage.
This method was “growing quite fast before Covid”, says Giza, but has “stagnated” since because of staff shortages – those needed to train home patients had to be deployed in clinics to keep them open.