In 1974 we began manufacturing a hollow fiber dialyzer (artificial kidney) developed using our original cellulose fiber technology based on our long experience as a chemical and fiber maker. In the years since then, we have worked to improve the quality-consistency and technology of dialyzers and dialyzer system technology to meet growing demand for hemodialysis therapy at home and abroad. Our dialyzers are used in more than 70 countries worldwide and hold the leading market share in Japan.

The hemodialysis business that we pioneered in Japan and overseas forms the foundation that supports the Asahi Kasei Group’s medical enterprises. Our expertise in separation technology using membranes and adsorbents is contributing to the development and widespread adoption of advanced treatment technologies for improved safety in therapeutic apheresis and blood products for transfusion.

In the hemodialysis business, we must satisfy demand for product performance, safety and stable supply. For patients with chronic renal failure, life depends upon undergoing dialysis several times weekly. Since each treatment takes a day, including travel time, the life of a person who requires hemodialysis is severely restricted. This is why there is such a great need for hemodialysis products that can help improve the quality of life, accommodating individual differences in condition and attitude to therapy, while ensuring safety and peace of mind.

Drawing on more than three decades of experience, we are applying our cumulative expertise to provide a variety of dialyzers suited to different patient conditions, in addition to enhancing the performance of other devices used in dialysis therapy. Furthermore, to make hemodialysis more widely available and assure that it can be used with confidence, we engage in joint research with medical treatment facilities to develop new and better products while also distributing operating instructions and technical information to hospitals and clinics.

Thanks to the longstanding efforts of many people, hemodialysis therapy has attained a high level of availability and development in Japan. In many parts of the world, however, kidney disease sufferers are at risk of serious deterioration of their condition due to inadequacies in the hemodialysis treatment environment. With economic development and progress in the provision of healthcare infrastructure, there will be an increase in both the population of patients undergoing dialysis therapy and the demand for high-level hemodialysis treatment.

We can help respond to this situation by making available to the rest of the world the products we developed for advanced hemodialysis therapy in Japan. Applying Japan’s manufacturing expertise and artisanal spirit, we are increasingly providing products and services tailored to healthcare environments around the globe. We want as many people as possible worldwide to have access to top-level dialysis therapy.

In the face of a growing population of patients in need of dialysis, our duty is clear. We must make ourselves indispensable by taking action based on consideration of what will best serve patients and what will be useful to the doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals involved in treatment, wherever and whenever required. In this spirit, we are committed to fulfilling the heavy responsibility of helping to make high-level dialysis widely available, maintaining uninterrupted business operations and ensuring a stable product supply, unaffected by economic or environmental factors.

With our dialyzers and other dialysis products, we are intent upon becoming a leading international company while serving as a firm foundation to support and drive the global expansion of the medical enterprises of the Asahi Kasei Group.