Nephrolife Care, a “first of its kind” chain of renal disease management centre has received a funding commitment of Rs 13.5 crore (US$ 3 million) from ROI Capital Advisors. Out of this, the nephro major has allocated Rs 4.5 crore to open up a state-of-the-art facility in Bangalore.

The nephrology care initiative was set up by Shriram Vijayakumar in September 2009 and the lead investor is ROI Capital advisors. Nephrolife Care is looking at setting up a pan-India network of nephrology hospitals. It is gearing up to open 10 centres in the next three years. These will include a second facility in Bangalore, one each in Chennai in end of 2010 and Hyderabad during the latter half of 2011.

The super speciality dedicated nephrology hospital in Bangalore operates through a Machine Networking model where in all the dialysis data is captured in real time. This offering is a one-of-a-kind in South Asia according to Shriram Vijayakumar, founder and chairman, Nephrolife Care.

The advanced centre spans over 8, 000 sq ft, and has a fully equipped modular operation theatre. Although, nephrology is the hospital’s specialty, it also provides consulting services in urology and cardiology, he added.

The key objective of the facility is to enhance the quality and longevity amongst patients. The patients are not only offered haemodialysis, peritoneal dialysis and automated peritoneal dialysis, nephrology consulting, preventive nephrology for high risk individuals, laboratory for medical investigative needs, minor operating theatre for temporary and permanent access for dialysis, but also provides support through diet and lifestyle management, psychological and counselling services for the patients and their families to cope with the challenges posed by Chronic Kidney Disease and End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD).

The main equipments include multipara monitors, oxygen ventilators, defibrillators. The facility is a paperless centre and also Wi-Fi enabled and video cameras have been installed across to monitor patients constantly and their data to be accessed anywhere.

The patient is also offered services of pick-up and drop from their residences to the hospital accompanied by trained staff, he said.

According to a section of nephrologists, incidence of chronic kidney disorders is on the rise and affects one out of nine people in the country. There is a serious shortfall of nephrology care centres and experts. Present estimates indicate that the country has a mere 800 nephrologists to treat one lakh new chronic kidney disorders as against the US which has five times more nephrologists and accounts for just one third of the India's population.