KitNewCare has now published that groundwork openly. Fourteen dataset records on Zenodo cover the project’s four clinical sites in four countries, Modena in Italy, Utrecht in the Netherlands, Warsaw in Poland and Madrid in Spain, and together they constitute one of the more detailed open inventories of dialysis care available.

The collection has two halves. The first is a set of clinical pathway datasets, one per site and modality, covering peritoneal dialysis at all four centres and haemodialysis at Modena and Madrid. These are not summary tables. They document the treatment pathway stage by stage: patient education and evaluation of suitability for home therapy, pre-surgical assessment and catheter placement, vascular access creation and monitoring, machine preparation and patient connection, routine and emergency monitoring, and the management of complications, with the materials, roles and activities attached to each step. A further dataset extends the same approach to the laboratory, mapping the urine and blood analysis workflow used in a Madrid kidney screening programme down to the individual analyser platforms involved.

The second half is the physical evidence base. Five product image collections, 82 records for Modena, 67 for Madrid haemodialysis, 56 for Utrecht, 48 for Madrid peritoneal dialysis and 44 for Warsaw, close to 300 in total, document individual consumables disassembled into their components, each annotated with its measured weight. Catheters and surgical kits, connection devices, clamps, gauze, gloves, tubing, packaging and patient education material are all covered. For anyone building an inventory of dialysis consumables, this is the part that is hardest to reproduce and most immediately reusable.

Two further datasets accompany specific published analyses: the results behind the project’s screening of haemodialysis environmental optimisations, and the comparison of single-use acid concentrate bags against a centralised dry powder system. Both allow the published conclusions to be checked, re-run under different assumptions, or extended.

The datasets carry no access restrictions and no embargo. Each has a DOI, so it can be cited directly, and each sits alongside the paper it supports in the project’s Zenodo community. The approach follows the commitments set out in the project’s Data Management Plan, which was published in June 2024 and is itself openly available: green open access as the default with gold prioritised where possible, Zenodo as the long-term preservation route, persistent identifiers for all datasets, and open research data accessible without login or identification. The plan names the ISO 14040 series and the EU Product Environmental Footprint method as terminology standards, which is what makes the inventories intelligible to teams working in other specialties. Personal data, raw qualitative material and identifiable survey responses are deliberately excluded; anything published is aggregated or pseudonymised.

The intended audience extends well beyond nephrology. The project has consistently framed kidney care as a demonstrator for sustainable healthcare more generally, a specialty with a large disease burden, a heavy material footprint and a well-defined care ecosystem, in which solutions to water, energy, plastics and waste problems should transfer. Open inventory data is how that transfer actually happens. A team assessing another treatment pathway can take the product weights, the pathway structure and the modelling approach and adapt them, rather than starting again.

Researchers, clinical teams, procurement specialists and other EU projects are welcome to use the datasets, and the project would be glad to hear how they are being applied.

Related readings

• Life Cycle Assessment Dataset For Peritoneal Dialysis in Madrid — dataset
• Product Images of Life Cycle Assessment Dataset For Peritoneal Dialysis in Madrid, Spain — dataset
• Life Cycle Assessment Dataset For Peritoneal Dialysis in Utrecht, Netherlands — dataset
• Product Images of Life Cycle Assessment Dataset For Peritoneal Dialysis in Utrecht, Netherlands — dataset
• Life Cycle Assessment Dataset For Peritoneal Dialysis in Warsaw, Poland — dataset
• Product Images of Life Cycle Assessment Dataset For Peritoneal Dialysis in Warsaw, Poland — dataset
• Life Cycle Assessment Dataset For Peritoneal Dialysis in Modena — dataset
• Product Images for Life Cycle Assessment Dataset For Peritoneal Dialysis and Haemodialysis in Modena — dataset
• Life Cycle Assessment Dataset For Haemodialysis in Madrid, Spain — dataset
• Product Images For Life Cycle Assessment Dataset For Haemodialysis in Madrid — dataset
• Life Cycle Assessment Dataset For Haemodialysis in Modena — dataset
• Life Cycle Assessment Dataset For Urine and Blood Analysis in Madrid — dataset
• Life Cycle Assessment Dataset for Kidney Care Environmental Optimisations within Haemodialysis — dataset
• Green Haemodialysis: Comparison of Dialysis Bags Versus Fresenius Granumix Water Recycling System at the AOU Policlinico di Modena, Italy — dataset
• D2.1 Data Management Plan — project deliverable
• Browse the full KitNewCare collection on Zenodo

*Photo by Polina Tankilevitch