Associate Professor John Agar

After completing under graduate medical training at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia in 1970, Professor Agar trained in internal medicine and nephrology at the Alfred and Prince Henry's Hospitals in Melbourne followed by a clinical and research fellowship at the University of Massachusetts Medical Centre in the US.

He is currently Director of Nephrology and Chief of Service (Medicine) at Barwon Health in his family home town of Geelong. He is also a senior transplant physician to the Transplant Service at St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne. He is a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine with the University of Melbourne with special interests in extended hour and frequency haemodialysis, nocturnal home haemodialysis, fistula management and "optimal" (as opposed to adequate) haemodialysis.

He has actively promoted the expansion of home haemodialysis and, in particular, nocturnal home haemodialysis in Australia. He is widely published in the peer-review literature and is the author of the patient oriented website http://www.nocturnaldialysis.org He has also been invited to speak to numerous Australian and International meetings.

Ms. Deborah Brouwer RN CNN

Deborah has practiced nephrology nursing since graduation from Western Pennsylvania Hospital School of Nursing in 1983. She has clinical experience as a Staff RN, Charge RN, Nursing Supervisor, CQI Coordinator and Staff Education Specialist. Areas of practice include all forms of Renal Replacement Therapies for both acute and chronic kidney disease. She is certified as a Nephrology Nurse (CNN.)

Deborah is one of the original Work Group members and remains on the current Work Group for the National Kidney Foundation's Kidney Disease Outcomes Quality Initiative (K/DOQI) for Vascular access. This Work Group developed nationally and internationally recognised guidelines for vascular access care in End Stage REnal Disease (ESRD) patients. The guidelines have been accepted by the Centres for Medicare Services (CMS) as the goals for the current CMS National Vascular Access Improvement Initiative (NVAII) or "Fistula First" project currently underway with the ESRD Networks. Deborah served as a Work Group Member for the NVAII and now serves on the Practitioner and Beneficiary Education workgroups.

She has authored numerous medical journal publications on the topic of vascular access and presents frequently at national and regional level medical conferences.

Dr. Robert Lindsay

Dr. Robert Lindsay has been a Professor Medicine at the University of Western Ontario since 1983. His medical training began in Glasgow and when complete, he emigrated to Canada to set up his practice in Nephrology, along with the late Dr. Adam Linton, at Victoria Hospital in 1974. He currently is a member of the Division of Nephrology at London Health Sciences Centre, Victoria Campus along with other colleagues.

His research activities include:

• Studies into the adaption to home dialysis
• The dialyser induced pulmonary vascular response
• Blood foreign surface interactions
• The evaluation (in-vivo) of new dialysers and dialytic methods
• Clinical trials in dialysis
• Blood foreign surface interactions; thrombosis and complement systems
• Nutritional status in renal failure and its treatment
• Hypertension research
• Biosensors in dialysis

And more recently:

• Blood access development/monitoring and;
• Daily/nocturnal haemodialysis study supported by funding from the Ontario Ministry of Health and multi-centre study with the NIH

Research funding has exceeded over $10 million and as a result of his research, has written well over 200 papers and book chapters submitted to leading nephrology journals. His research activity has lead to invitations at many National and International conferences and he is one of the leading researchers today in vascular access and daily/nocturnal haemodialysis. His recent work in the field of daily/nocturnal haemodialysis resulted in the American Journal of Kidney Diseases supplement in July of 2003 allong with the recently publsihed book entitled "Daily and Nocturnal Haemodialysis."

Dr. John Moran

John Moran graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1969. After clinical training in Internal Medicine and Nephrology at St Vincents Hospital, Melbourne, he spent 3 years in research in the immunology of renal disease with Professor Keith Peters at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, London. He returned to appointments at St Vincents as a nephrologist and general physician. In 1983 he became Senior Research Fellow at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute for Medical Research, working on human and xenogeneic pancreatic islet transplantation. In 1987 together with Dr David Davies he gave the first description of the ANCA antibody.

In 1991 he joined the Renal Division of Baxter Healthcare as Global Medical Director based in Deerfield, Illinois. While there he initiated and carried out the ADEMEX study of peritoneal dialysis adequacy.

In 1998 he joined Vasca Inc as Chief Medical Officer. He was responsible for the clinical trials on the LifeSite devices for vascular and peritoneal access.

In 2002 he became Chief Scientific Officer and Director of Research for Satellite Healthcare, a non profit organisation caring for approximately 2,000 dialysis patients in North Carolina. He is also Chief Medical Officer of WellBound, a subsidiary of Satellite, the focus of which is to establish dedicated home dialysis training facilities throughout the USA. As of April 2006 WellBound manages more than 450 PD patients and more than 50 daily home HD patients in 5 centres.

He is also a consulting Professor in the School of Medicine at Stanford University.