GoodRENal  project partners have met face-to-face in May at the central library of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece. Attendants included Nephrologists, Cardiologists, Nurses, Physiotherapists, and Engineers from Greece, Sweden, Belgium, and Spain. All of them had the chance to discuss the project’s dissemination, administrative, and financial issues and present the experiences and suggestions of the virtual platform included in the pilot study of Greece, Sweden and Spain.

At the moment, the results of the GoodRENal project have been presented at several international and National congresses. In the next months, results of the pilot studies will be presented.

GoodRENal is funded by the Erasmus+ program and produces tools for a holistic treatment of subjects undertaking hemodialysis. It promotes a healthy lifestyle among these patients, including nutrition, exercise/physical activity, psychological well-being, and improved cognitive state. All information can be found at the project website (www.goodrenal.eu).

On May 17th the GoodRENal project presented at the Health Sciences Faculty (Universidad Cardenal Herrera-CEU) the recommendations for a healthy lifestyle approach for people undertaking hemodialysis. Attendants included nephrologists, renal nurses, physiotherapists, nutritionists, psychologists, patients and non-formal carers, and students from Spain and Colombia.
The recommendations will be uploaded to the project website, (www.goodrenal.eu) in a friendly format and in different languages before the end of August 2023.

GoodRENal is funded by the Erasmus+ program and produces tools for a holistic treatment of subjects undertaking hemodialysis. It promotes a healthy lifestyle among these patients, including nutrition, exercise/physical activity, psychological well-being, and improved cognitive state. All information can be found at the project website (www.goodrenal.eu).ian. For every topic, the same questions were talked through: Why? Who? When and where? What and how? And to conclude, red flags were explained. Based on the feedback received (using the User Satisfaction Evaluation Questionnaire), the satisfaction of the participants in the peer-to-peer training was high about this informative moment and the educational material. That’s good news for our patients, as they are the ones who will feel a change of attitude at the dialysis units!

GoodRENal is funded by the Erasmus+ program and produces tools for a holistic treatment of subjects undertaking hemodialysis. It promotes a healthy lifestyle among these patients, including nutrition, exercise/physical activity, psychological well-being, and improved cognitive state. All information can be found at the project website (www.goodrenal.eu).

The main aim of the GoodRENal project is to promote healthy lifestyle habits in people with chronic kidney disease. This starts with education of patients, their carers and healthcare professionals active at dialysis units. Last months, educational sessions for healthcare professionals have taken place in four countries: AHEPA Hospital (Thessaloniki, Greece), Hospital Manises (Valencia, Greece), Skåne University Hospital (Lund, Sweden) and University Hospitals Leuven (Leuven, Belgium – see pictures). Discussed topics were disease-specific aspects of physical activity, nutrition and psychological well-being in hemodialysis patients. Education took place in microsessions (peer-to-peer training) based on recommendations developed by a group of international experts consisting of nephrologists, physiotherapists, psychologists and a dietitian. For every topic, the same questions were talked through: Why? Who? When and where? What and how? And to conclude, red flags were explained. Based on the feedback received (using the User Satisfaction Evaluation Questionnaire), the satisfaction of the participants in the peer-to-peer training was high about this informative moment and the educational material. That’s good news for our patients, as they are the ones who will feel a change of attitude at the dialysis units!

GoodRENal is funded by the Erasmus+ program and produces tools for a holistic treatment of subjects undertaking hemodialysis. It promotes a healthy lifestyle among these patients, including nutrition, exercise/physical activity, psychological well-being, and improved cognitive state. All information can be found at the project website (www.goodrenal.eu).

GoodRENal project outcomes will be ready for presentation by May 2023 at Universidad Cardenal Herrera-CEU, Valencia. The Health Sciences Faculty will hold this event to show the recommendations produced by the group of experts in people undertaking hemodialysis. They include recommendations for an active lifestyle, nutritional recommendations, and recommendations to increase psychological wellbeing and improve the cognitive state.

The GoodRENal virtual health platform during hemodialysis is currently being tested in three European Countries, Greece, Sweden and Spain, and will also be presented and a demo will be performed for all the attendants to know the advantages of this holistic approach to improve the healthy lifestyle of people undertaking hemodialysis.

 Are you interested in attending the Multiplier Event of GoodRENal?

You can register by filling up this form with basic data.
https://forms.gle/PDNjtARZEt5r7JXRA

A certificate of attendance will be provided, and if you need to travel from out of Valencia, the organization of the event will contact you in order to arrange the trip details. If you are a healthcare professional, a person with chronic kidney disease, a formal or informal carer of a person with chronic kidney disease, or an institutional stakeholder (policy-maker, public administrator, regional entity, officer) you are very welcome to attend the multiplier event

The agenda will start by 10:30 a.m and will include a presentation of the project, a detailed presentation of the nutritional, physical activity, psychological well-being and cognitive recommendations, and a demo of the GoodRENal virtual health platform. The event will include a coffee break and will end up at lunchtime.

The Spanish partners of GoodRENal will present the different outcomes that will be freely available in different languages at www.goodrenal.eu If you need further information you may contact us by email at goodrenaleu@gmail.com

GoodRENal is funded by the Erasmus+ program and produces tools for a holistic treatment of subjects undertaking hemodialysis. It promotes a healthy lifestyle among these patients, including nutrition, exercise/physical activity, psychological well-being, and improved cognitive state. All information can be found at the project website (www.goodrenal.eu).

order to start it in patients soon.

All information can be found at the project website (www.goodrenal.eu).

GoodRENal, a European project that involves the design of a virtual platform to be used during hemodialysis sessions to promote adherence to healthy habits, is advancing in its development.

This platform has been designed by specialists from the CEU UCH, UV, UPV and the Hospital de Manises in Spain, the Karolinska Institute and the Skane University Hospital in Sweden; the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium and the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece.

The platform is being tested by Spanish researchers to be implemented in hemodialysis patients at Hospital de Manises. Candidate patients will use the platform in each dialysis session, promoting healthy habits on exercise, nutrition, psychological well-being and cognitive status specific to this type of pathology through games. The games have different levels of difficulty.

From Hospital de Manises, with the CEU UCH, UV and UPV, the last adjustments are being made in order to start it in patients soon.

All information can be found at the project website (www.goodrenal.eu).

Succinct recommendations on how to preserve and promote a healthy lifestyle for patients on hemodialysis were created by the GoodRENal group. The group is an international multidisciplinary group comprising nephrologists, a specialist in sports medicine, a dietician, a physiotherapist, psychologists and computer scientists. The overall aim is to educate healthcare professionals, patients and their informal caregivers on how to best pursue physical activity and a healthy and safe diet as well as to stimulate cognition and emotional well-being.  Physicians and nursing staff were the focus of this educational activity.

In most countries there is a shortage of nursing staff giving little time to take staff away from the dialysis unit for formal lectures. A new method was developed with short educational “micro-sessions” with a duration of about 10 minutes. There were three training sessions: physical activity, nutrition and cognition and emotional well-being. Depending on local resources nurses and physiotherapists were trained to present the recommendations using 7-8 plasticized A4 cards per subject and session. Small groups of nursing staff ranging between 2 and 5 people at a time could sit in the dialysis ward during a lull in their work and learn. This method was met with enthusiasm and enjoyment. Physicians received a traditional PowerPoint lecture.

GoodRENal is funded by the Erasmus+ program and produces tools for a holistic treatment of subjects undertaking hemodialysis. It promotes a healthy lifestyle among these patients.

On 24th November, the «VIII Conference on industrial applications of research» took place, organized by the Institute of Industrial Automation and Informatics (ai2), belonging to the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), one of the partners of the GoodRENal project. In this conference, and under the title of «GoodRENal: Virtual platform for healthy lifestyle habits in people with chronic kidney disease», the virtual platform being developed in this project was presented to society. Specifically, attendees were made aware of the purpose of the platform, and its technical characteristics. The purpose of the platform is to promote healthy lifestyle habits for people with chronic kidney disease during hemodialysis sessions. 

SYSTEM 1: “VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS”
This system offers several Virtual Scenarios (games) for each one of the areas on which treatment is intended: Physical Activity, Psychological Well-being, Cognitive Functionality, and Nutritional Information. Specifically, these scenarios (“games”) are aimed to make participants move (Physical Activity), to put their cognitive abilities into practice (Cognitive Functionality), to improve their psychologicall  state (Psychological Well-being), and to learn aspects related to nutrition that they must follow (Nutritional Information).

SYSTEM 2: «PATIENT INTERACTION – VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS»
Considering that during hemodialysis sessions people are bedridden or sitting in armchairs with tubes connected to their veins, the interaction with the Virtual Scenarios should be in the least “invasive” and “annoying” possible way. To do this, thanks to this system and using a depth camera (AZURE Kinect), the patient, through the movement of their lower extremities (legs) will be able to carry out the interaction.

SYSTEM 3: “THERAPIST APPLICATION”
This system offers the therapist in charge of the hemodialysis session an alternative with which to define what is called GoodRENAL Virtual Session, that is, the Virtual Scenarios that will be offered to the patient in each session. On the other hand, it also offers the therapist the possibility of viewing the relevant clinical data of each session obtained by the platform with great level detail: clinical data for each Virtual Scenario, and each area (Physical Activity, Cognitive Functionality, Psychological Well-being and Nutrition Information).

Sexual dysfunction occurs frequently in people with chronic kidney disease (CKD), however, there is a lack of research regarding the mechanistic and clinical aspects of sexual health in this population. A recent article on this topic is shedding light on which are the barriers to research on sexual function in CKD (Harrison et al., 2020).

Patients with CKD are frequently affected by multiple chronic comorbidities, which affect their health-related quality of life. Sexual function can be affected by the kidney condition itself and other common comorbidities, such as diabetes or cardiovascular disease. Sexual dysfunctions may include disorders of physical function (such as erectile disorders in males or genito-pelvic pain disorder in females), as well as disorders related to sexual desire or orgasm (such as orgasmic disorder in females or premature ejaculation in males). For instance, according to the literature, erectile dysfunction among CKD male patients undergoing hemodialysis treatment is as frequent as between 68% to 92%. On the other hand, females are also affected by sexual dysfunctions, with an estimated 59% of those receiving dialysis having difficulties achieving orgasm.

Despite sexual dysfunction occurring commonly in people with CKD, it has been seen that this topic is not sufficiently covered in research. Barriers to improve sexual function in CKD include: 1) The stigma of sexual dysfunction; 2) The varying definitions of sexual dysfunction; and 3) The discordance between patient priorities and research. In order to address potential research revenues, it has been suggested to: 1) Explore the reasons for stigma in this population and engage clinical and scientific CKD community in setting the research agenda; 2) evaluate and standardize disease definitions in CKD populations; and 3) design knowledge translation strategies to bridge the gap between research and clinical practice, as well as engage patients and multidisciplinary team members in research.

Bibliography: Harrison, T. G., Skrtic, M., Verdin, N. E., Lanktree, M. B., & Elliott, M. J. (2020). Improving sexual function in people with chronic kidney disease: a narrative review of an unmet need in nephrology research. Canadian Journal of Kidney Health and Disease, 7, 2054358120952202.

GoodRENal project partners have meet face-to-face for the first time in September at the Health Sciences Faculty of Universidad Cardenal Herrera-CEU, Valencia. Attendants included Nephrologists, Cardiologists, Nurses, Dietitians, Psychologists, Physiotherapists, and Engineers from Greece, Sweden, Belgium, and Spain. All of them had the chance to test the platform and suggest improvements for the final version. Games have been developed by the Universitat Politècnica de Valéncia after years of experience in implementing virtual reality exercises at the Hospital of Manises (Valencia) with the support of Universidad Cardenal Herrera-CEU. The GoodRENal platform will include not only physical activity but also nutrition, and psychological and cognitive games.
In the next months, a pilot study will be implemented in several European countries to test the platform. Results of needs, barriers, and facilitators of all stakeholders involved in healthy behaviors in the hemodialysis units will be published within the next months. At the moment, the results of the GoodRENal project have been presented at several international and National congresses.
GoodRENal is funded by the Erasmus+ program and produces tools for a holistic treatment of subjects undertaking hemodialysis. It promotes a healthy lifestyle among these patients, including nutrition, exercise/physical activity, psychological well-being, and improved cognitive state. All information can be found at the project website (www.goodrenal.eu).