liberDi: EIC Accelerator Grant for Home Dialysis, What Came Next

Peritoneal dialysis cleans the blood of kidney patients through the lining of their own abdomen, without a needle or a hospital machine, and it can be done at home. Yet in Europe most of the 358,000 people on dialysis still travel to a clinic for it, according to the EU project summary on CORDIS. liberDi, an Israeli start-up founded in 2014 and incubated by the Trendlines Group, set out to change that with a small automated machine that runs a fluid exchange in about 20 minutes and reports every treatment to the patient's doctor.

In the April 2019 round of the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2, the Horizon 2020 forerunner of today's EIC Accelerator, the company won a grant of €2,160,725 for its device, then called Warrick X1. The promise was clinical validation, a CE mark and commercial launch in Europe. Seven years on, the device has a US clearance, a new name and a renamed company behind it. The European milestones have not been announced.

Where the Company Stands Now

liberDi no longer trades under that name. On 10 September 2023 it announced that it was "rebranding and will be named iRen-MEDICAL moving forward", and its old domain now forwards to iren-medical.com. The Israeli company register, as mirrored by OpenCorporates, lists company number 515167435 as active, under the Hebrew name איירן מדיקל בע"מ and the English name Iren Medical, with a registered address on HaIlan Street in Or Akiva. The same Or Akiva address appears on the company's FDA clearance. Filed accounts of Israeli private companies are not public, so revenue, losses and equity could not be checked.

The company's own news page stops in September 2023. The latest dated trace found for this article is from 10 January 2025, when Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Northeastern Pennsylvania named iRen-Medical, Inc., of Northampton County, among twelve companies sharing $1,060,000 in early-stage investments; the amount for iRen was not disclosed. CB Insights also lists Ben Franklin among its investors. The Israeli start-up database Startupim marks the company active with 18 employees as of September 2026, but that figure is an aggregator estimate, not a company statement. With no company announcement in the past 12 months, the article records its status as unknown rather than active.

The Technology: a Dialysis Clinic in a 3 kg Box

Home peritoneal dialysis normally means one of two things. Patients swap bags of dialysis fluid by hand four times a day, each exchange taking about 40 minutes on average, according to the CORDIS project summary. Manual exchanges carry a risk of peritonitis each time the catheter is opened, and the CORDIS summary puts non-compliance with treatment schedules as high as 53%.

liberDi's answer, now sold under the name Digital Dialysis Clinic, is a portable "Intelligent Dialysis Assistant" (IDA) with a single-use cartridge holding a peristaltic pump, automatic disinfection of the catheter connection, a patient smartphone app and a cloud portal for the clinic. The device weighs 3 kg and completes an exchange in 20 minutes, according to the Home Dialysis Central patient site; the company's CORDIS summary claims it is up to 80% lighter and 50% smaller than existing machines and saves over 30% of annual dialysis costs. Those comparisons are the company's own and have not been independently tested in any published study found for this article.

The quote comes from a member of the company's own advisory board, who is listed on the ExitValley investor page and the company's team page.

What the EIC Grant Promised, and What the Record Shows

liberDi first won a €50,000 EIC Phase 1 feasibility grant, LPPDS, which ran from August to November 2018. Its report says the company used it to define the engineering needed "to scale-up the production of Warrick X1, achieve clinical validation and CE mark, and achieve the first commercial sale."

The Phase 2 grant followed in the cut-off of 3 April 2019. The European Commission's list of selected companies names LIBERDI LTD of Misgav as the sole beneficiary of Warrick X1; no partner company is listed. The same round funded another Israeli peritoneal dialysis venture, Paragate Medical's implantable IPUD device. Israel was an associated country of Horizon 2020, which is why an Israeli company could apply. The grant agreement was signed on 23 July 2019 and the project ran from 1 September 2019 to 31 August 2022, according to CORDIS.

CORDIS publishes one periodic report for the project, labelled period 3 (September 2021 to August 2022). Its text describes only early work: the design was finalised, the first devices were produced for trials, software was upgraded and a human factors usability study "has started", with the results to be used "for the CE submission". The stated aim was to validate the system clinically, "apply for the CE Mark certification and enable commercialisation in Europe". No deliverables or results are published.

The clinical work did happen, mostly in Israel. The company reported two studies with its FDA filing: a first in-human study of 42 patients doing a single exchange at three Israeli dialysis centres, and a home study of 10 patients on continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis with "no adverse events, serious or otherwise", according to Healio and the Trendlines Group. A multi-centre home-use study at Soroka, Carmel and Meir medical centres began on 22 December 2021 with 20 planned patients (NCT04808011). In Europe's orbit, a UK study of up to 15 patients led by Richard Corbett of Imperial College received a favourable ethics opinion on 6 April 2022, according to the Health Research Authority (NCT05342935). Both registry entries were last updated in 2022, show their status as unknown, and post no results.

1. Finalise and build the deviceDeliveredDevices produced for trials, per the CORDIS report; cleared by the FDA as IDA.
2. Clinical validationPartly42 and 10 patient studies reported; the 2021 Israeli and 2022 UK studies post no results.
3. CE markNot achievedNot announced by the company or any third party.
4. Commercial launch in EuropeNot achievedNo European customer, distributor or sale is public.
5. US market clearance (not an EU goal)Delivered510(k) K220935, 29 December 2022.

The US Detour

The company's most concrete result came from Washington rather than Brussels. liberDi filed its 510(k) on 31 March 2022, and the FDA found the "Digital Dialysis Clinic - Intelligent Dialysis Assistant (IDA) with Medical Supervision Portal and IDA Smartphone App" substantially equivalent to existing automatic peritoneal delivery systems on 29 December 2022, four months after the EU project ended, according to the FDA database. The company announced it in early January 2023, and the American Technion Society reported in March 2023 that it planned to enter the US market that year and to commercialise in Israel, the US and Europe.

Whether that launch happened could not be verified. No US hospital, dialysis provider or patient programme using the device has been announced. A search of the FDA's establishment registration and device listing data through the openFDA interface returned no listing for the K220935 device, although that data set is not complete proof either way. The company has a US entity in Pennsylvania, per the Ben Franklin announcement, and its team page lists a US adviser for renal care commercialisation.

The Money

How much the company has raised is not consistent across sources. A Calcalist profile published in March 2024 put the total at $9.1 million, of which $3 million were grants, and the staff at 8. Startupim gives $4.765 million, with rounds from the Israel Innovation Authority in 2016, ExitValley in 2019, the Intuition Fund in 2021 and an undisclosed round in November 2022. CB Insights gives $1.13 million. Two crowd-investing campaigns on ExitValley, both convertible, closed at 1,133% and 103% of their targets, but neither page discloses the amount raised. The company is not in the EIC Fund portfolio; its award was grant only.

Why It Matters for Europe

Dialysis takes 2% of the EU's healthcare budget, with reimbursement costs of €40,000 to €80,000 per patient a year, according to the CORDIS summary. Moving patients from clinic chairs to home treatment is one of the few levers that cuts both cost and burden on patients, and a portable, monitored device fits that aim. But a medical device reaches European patients only through a CE mark under the Medical Device Regulation, which became mandatory in May 2021, in the middle of this project. The company took its device to the US route first, and for now the EU-funded technology is cleared for American patients and not for European ones.

The Verdict

A grant funds development, not market success, and on development the record is credible: two reported clinical studies and a device cleared by the FDA. What the EIC was promised in return, a product for European patients, is still missing. iRen Medical has not been asked for comment for this article, which is based on public records and published statements, linked throughout.