UTTechMedCHOIRNewsCHOIR participated in the Willem Kolff Battle of the Universities 2018

CHOIR participated in the Willem Kolff Battle of the Universities 2018

Together with two UT researchers in biochemistry, CHOIR competed in the Willem Kolff Battle of the Universities 2018. In honour of the inventor of the artificial kidney, young researchers are challenged to come up with innovative solutions for dialysis patients or kidney transplantation.

We developed a mathematical model that can reduce the yearly time burden of dialysis patients with and estimated 300 hours, or 8 work weeks. With Dialysis-on-the-go, a bus picks a patient up at home to dialyse during the bus ride. The model finds an optimal route that minimizes idle time for patients and total route duration for the bus, while respecting pickup and drop-off times. We have shown with our model that patients can beĀ dropped off at their preferred location with almost no idle time. This is in contrast to dialysis in the hospital, where patients are picked up and dropped off by a group taxi, where travel time and waiting time are a major component of the total time spend for dialysis.

The first prize was awarded to the Leiden University team, who we congratulate with their automatically retracting needle. Our concept was met with a lot of enthusiasm and valuable feedback. We will continue our efforts on operational challenges for kidney patients.