When my dad was 79, his nephrologist told him he needed dialysis—in-center, three times a week, for the rest of his life unless a donor appeared.
It was grueling. The schedule, the travel, the toll it took on him. When he decided he wanted to try home dialysis instead, his care team was skeptical. At his age? Living alone? It seemed nearly impossible.
But I'd just finished reading Being Mortal, and I knew this was his choice to make. So we went to training together. Every single day, I sat with him in that dialysis center classroom, watching him learn the dozens of steps, the precise timing, the critical safety checks.
And honestly? I didn't see a lot of success coming his way—not because he couldn't do it, but because of the process itself.
Dialysis demands near-perfect adherence. Every session. Every step. No shortcuts. And I kept thinking about behavioral drift—how familiarity breeds contempt, how even experts skip steps once they think they "know" the routine.
My dad's tools? Memory and a generic step list in a printed binder.
Then, on vacation, I read The Checklist Manifesto. Everything clicked. The book's central insight—that complex, step-driven processes don't improve with repetition, they deteriorate—hit me like a freight train. Airlines don't let pilots skip checklists. Surgeons don't wing it in the OR. Why were we expecting dialysis patients to rely on memory and a static binder?
I started coding Dial-Assist right there in the training room.
My dad has been doing solo home hemodialysis since January 2025. He's had zero avoidable hospital re-admissions. He's thriving. And when his transplant team evaluated him, they said one of the main reasons they'd even consider transplanting an 80-year-old man was his exceptional success with home dialysis.
He lives alone. He does the hardest modality there is—solo home hemo—and he does it with confidence.
That's why Dial-Assist exists. Not to replace healthcare providers. Not to make dialysis "easy." But to give patients like my dad the tools they need to do dialysis right, every single time—so they can live the life they choose, at home, on their terms.
Dialysis done right. Every time.