Pur­ple House, the Indige­nous-run non-prof­it which pro­vides kid­ney dial­y­sis treat­ment for those with renal fail­ure in the remotest com­mu­ni­ties of Cen­tral Aus­tralia, is look­ing to improve its on-the-move ser­vice, using the Precinct and DKA Solar Cen­tre to test new ideas.

The Pur­ple Trucks, self-con­tained dial­y­sis units on wheels which bring treat­ment direct­ly to patients in need, are com­pli­cat­ed to charge and need a lot of water to run, approx­i­mate­ly 1000 litres per day. It’s hoped that by using solar tech­nol­o­gy at the DKA Solar Cen­tre and the bore hole pump there, the envi­ron­ment of a remote com­mu­ni­ty can be sim­u­lat­ed. And the oppor­tu­ni­ties of using solar pow­er to charge bat­ter­ies for the dial­y­sis units can be explored.

The team are also look­ing at how to fur­ther con­serve water. They’re already able to sal­vage 50% of the water, recy­cling waste water and using reverse osmo­sis to fil­ter it. How­ev­er, this works best when the qual­i­ty of the water is good to begin with. This is not usu­al­ly the case in remote com­mu­ni­ties, which get their water from bore holes. This is anoth­er prob­lem Pur­ple House is work­ing to solve, using the bore pump here at the Precinct.

As well as improv­ing the func­tion­al­i­ty of the two Pur­ple Trucks, they want to ensure the vehi­cles are pleas­ant envi­ron­ments to work in. Nurs­es and patients spend extend­ed peri­ods of time inside, as each treat­ment takes around five hours. So solar ener­gy would be prefer­able to a noisy diesel engine, for example.

As well as the two trucks, Pur­ple House have 20 remote dial­y­sis clin­ics, bring­ing this essen­tial ser­vice to the com­mu­ni­ty, mean­ing patients do not have to trav­el away from their fam­i­lies. The trucks add flex­i­bil­i­ty, espe­cial­ly if patients need to trav­el away from home, for a funer­al for exam­ple. Dial­y­sis patients need treat­ment three times a week for the rest of their lives. Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affect­ed by chron­ic kid­ney dis­ease, which is often caused by diabetes.

Pur­ple House has recent­ly moved into the lab space at the Busi­ness and Inno­va­tion Cen­tre at the Desert Knowl­edge Precinct, where three full time bio-med­ical engi­neers repair, dis­in­fect, and test the remote osmo­sis units to ensure they’re func­tion­ing. Team mem­bers also dri­ve out to remote com­mu­ni­ties once a fort­night to ser­vice equip­ment that can’t get shipped back to Alice Springs.