Hemodialysis Machine Fluid Control Patents: Leaders & Trends 2026
- 65.6% concentration. The top 5 assignees alone account for 2,583 of 3,939 records in scope — a field where claim space is already staked out at the top.
- Filing has cooled from its 2021 pace. Recorded filings dropped from 189 in 2021 to 95 in 2024, a 50% decline over that three-year span, before the most recent publication-lag years understate the true count.
- A61M dominates, but informatics is rising. 82.9% of records sit in body-fluid device class A61M, while G16H healthcare informatics already reaches 12.2% — a sign fluid control is increasingly a software-and-alarm-logic problem, not just a hydraulics one.
Filing growth compares 2021 (189 records) with 2024 (95) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 3,939 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Hemodialysis machine fluid control spans the mechanisms that keep dialysate and blood moving safely through an extracorporeal circuit: ultrafiltration control, balancing chambers, blood pumps, air detectors, conductivity monitoring and the alarm hierarchies that tie these subsystems together. The search underlying this page pulls 3,939 published records dated between 2015 and the 2026-07-31 cut-off, drawn from filings that combine hemodialysis-machine and dialysis-fluid-control terms with the specific control mechanisms above.
The dataset is dominated by a small number of long-established medical device manufacturers, with a long tail of single- or few-filing entrants below them. Because publication trails filing by roughly 18 months, the most recent one to two years in any trend will always look thinner than the underlying filing activity actually was.
Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 3,939-record corpus: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claims.
Filing trend, 2017–2026
Recorded filings ran from 255 in 2017 to a peak of 262 in 2018, then declined to 95 by 2024 (down 50% from 189 in 2021) before the 2025-2026 figures — 4 in the latest year — reflect publication lag rather than a real stop in filing.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
A61M (devices for body fluids) covers 82.9% of records, far ahead of G16H healthcare informatics and B01D separation processes, both at 12.2%. G06F digital processing (8.2%) and A61B diagnosis and surgery (7.1%) point to fluid control increasingly overlapping with data processing and diagnostic feedback loops, while C02F water treatment (4.1%) and G01N material analysis (3.7%) mark smaller adjacent niches.
Shares are the percentage of the 3,939 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Hemodialysis Machine Fluid Control with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about hemodialysis machine fluid control and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative and most-cited filings
US5863421A — Hemodialysis machine with automatic priming by induced pressure pulses
A hemodialysis machine primes its extracorporeal circuit automatically before the patient is connected, filling the circuit with saline, dialysate or blood. A control system operates the blood pump and arterial/venous clamps to create brief pressure pulses that shear air bubbles off the dialyzer membrane, then clears the bubbles from the dialyzer compartment.Filed by Baxter International, granted 1999 — illustrative of how early priming and air-management claims were built directly into pump and clamp control logic rather than as a separate air-detector subsystem.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5247434A | Method and apparatus for kidney dialysis | 922 |
| 2 | US5591344A | Hot water disinfection of dialysis machines, including the extracorporeal circuit thereof | 687 |
| 3 | US5486286A | Apparatus for performing a self-test of kidney dialysis membrane | 577 |
| 4 | US5744027A | Apparatus for kidney dialysis | 515 |
| 5 | US20050209563A1 | Cassette-based dialysis medical fluid therapy systems, apparatuses and methods | 448 |
| 6 | US5863421A | Hemodialysis machine with automatic priming by induced pressure pulses | 426 |
| 7 | US20070278155A1 | Medical fluid system with flexible sheeting disposable unit | 404 |
| 8 | US6284131B1 | Method and apparatus for kidney dialysis | 388 |
| 9 | US20100192686A1 | Blood treatment systems and methods | 368 |
| 10 | WO1996025214A1 | Modular home dialysis system | 366 |
Citation counts are drawn from within the searched corpus and skew toward older filings — read them as signals of influence on later filers, not as a measure of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Put your own technology through the same analysis
Eureka on the web
When you want the answer in the next five minutes.
The agent works the prompt against patents and technical literature, citing every source.
Run your analysis now →MCP server & REST API
When it has to run inside your own pipeline.
Patent search, landscape analysis and assignee resolution as MCP tools. Drop them into any agent framework, or call REST directly.
Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three read-throughs from the concentration, trend and classification data above.
The top of the field is locked up
With 2,583 of 3,939 records held by five assignees, core mechanisms — balancing chambers, ultrafiltration control loops, blood pump governance — sit on dense, well-defended prior art. New entrants filing head-on into these claims face crowded art from filers who have been refining the same subsystems for years.
Activity has cooled from its recent peak
Recorded filings fell from 189 in 2021 to 95 in 2024. That is a real three-year decline, not a lag artefact, since 2024 is the last year with reasonably complete publication data — but it does not mean the technology is exhausted, only that the pace of new filing has slowed from its post-2018 high.
Informatics is a growing secondary layer
G16H healthcare informatics and B01D separation processes each reach 12.2% of the 3,939 records, well behind A61M's 82.9% but notable as secondary classes layered onto core fluid-control hardware. Filings increasingly pair mechanical control with software-driven monitoring and alarm logic.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to hemodialysis machine fluid control, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
The assignee ranking covers 100 companies returned by the data endpoint, not a curated top-50 or top-100 list. Activity is heavily front-loaded: a leader with 1,020 records, a fifth-place assignee at 332, and a tenth-place assignee at 89 — after which the ranking thins into single- and few-filing entrants.
One assignee dominates raw volume
The leading assignee's record count alone approaches a third of the full 3,939-record corpus, reflecting decades of continuous filing across dialysis machine generations rather than a single burst of activity.
A defined second tier, then a steep drop
Fifth place holds 332 records; tenth place holds just 89 — a steep fall-off that marks where the field moves from a handful of entrenched filers to a long tail of smaller or newer entrants.
Corporate structure shows up in the data
The strongest co-assignee pairing links two entities within the same corporate family, at 578 shared records — a reminder that some apparent 'separate' filers in the ranking are related legal entities rather than independent competitors.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| DEKA Products LP | 1 | -89% |
| Gambro Lundia AB | 1 | -50% |
| Fresenius Medical Care Holdings Inc | 0 | -100% |
| Baxter International Inc | 0 | -100% |
| Baxter Healthcare SA | 0 | -100% |
| Fresenius Medical Care Deutschland GmbH | 0 | -100% |
| Nakosdak Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. | 0 | -100% |
| Hope Medical Enterprises (dba Hope Pharma) | 0 | -100% |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a field with dense core claims and thinner coverage in adjacent informatics and diagnostics branches.
Map the alarm-hierarchy sub-claims
G16H's 12.2% share suggests informatics-layer claims on alarm prioritisation and fault logic are still being written; a targeted search inside that subclass would clarify how contested it already is.
Explore alarm logic claims in EurekaWatch for continuation activity from the leader
With one assignee holding 1,020 of 3,939 records, tracking its continuation and divisional filings is the fastest way to see where its claim strategy is heading next.
Track assignee filing activity in EurekaCheck receiving-office spread before filing
United States, EPO and PCT filings dominate the receiving-office counts; confirming coverage gaps in specific jurisdictions before drafting can avoid overlapping an existing regional filing.
Compare jurisdictional coverage in EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
One assignee leads with 1,020 of the 3,939 records in this dataset, and the top five assignees combined hold 65.6% of all records. This concentration reflects decades of continuous filing by a small number of established dialysis equipment manufacturers rather than a recent land grab. Below the top ten, which together hold 91.2% of records, the field thins into a long tail of companies with only a handful of filings each.
Filing activity peaked in 2018 at 262 records and has since declined, falling from 189 in 2021 to 95 in 2024 — a 50% drop over that three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year with reasonably complete data; years after that undercount because publication typically lags filing by about 18 months. The honest read is a cooling from a 2018 peak, not a technology in terminal decline.
A61M, the IPC subclass covering devices for body fluids, appears in 82.9% of the 3,939 records and is by far the dominant classification. Healthcare informatics (G16H) and separation processes (B01D) each reach 12.2% of records, showing meaningful but much smaller secondary activity. Digital processing (G06F, 8.2%) and diagnosis-related claims (A61B, 7.1%) indicate a growing overlap between mechanical fluid control and software-driven monitoring.
The chip-level gaps sit below the dominant hydraulic and mechanical claims: conductivity-based fault detection, multi-sensor alarm prioritisation logic, and software-defined ultrafiltration adjustment all show thinner representation relative to the core A61M claim density. These are areas where the underlying mechanical patents are heavily filed but the informatics and control-logic layer built on top of them is comparatively open. Anyone drafting here should still check the specific claim language of the leading assignees' recent filings, since informatics claims often get bundled into their broader device patents.
The most-cited records in this dataset, including patents from the mid-1990s, have simply had more time to accumulate citations from later filers working in the same space. This is a structural feature of citation analysis within a searched corpus, not evidence that older technology is more important today. A newer patent with few citations may still cover commercially active technology; citation count should be read as a measure of historical influence, not current relevance.
Research Hemodialysis Machine Fluid Control in depth with Eureka
Go past this page: query the whole hemodialysis machine fluid control corpus yourself, in your own scope.
Every answer comes back with patent numbers you can open.
Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.