Dialysis Museum

Our dialysis museum is currently closed as it moves to its new location in Burien. Check back here for details of the redesigned museum that features dialysis machines and equipment used at Northwest Kidney Centers and throughout the United States

A look back to the early days

At Northwest Kidney Centers, we are proud of our heritage as the first organization in the world founded with dialysis as its mission. The museum is home to more than a dozen dialysis machines and a gallery of photos of people who have influenced kidney care.

The dialysis museum shows the growth of our organization, and the strong roots of kidney therapy in Seattle. We started in 1962 with one facility with three beds. Today, about 400,000 people are on dialysis in the United States alone.

 

Take a virtual tour

Join Dr. Suzanne Watnick, our former chief medical officer, on a tour of the former dialysis museum based in Seattle.

 

Where it all began

It was 1960 when Dr. Belding Scribner and his colleagues at University of Washington developed the Scribner shunt, a device made of Teflon that could link an artery and a vein. This relatively simple device was revolutionary— it made long-term dialysis possible for the first time. Chronic kidney failure was no longer a death sentence. Two years later, Northwest Kidney Centers was founded to bring the new treatment to patients in the community.

Read more about our storied history, or take a stroll through the dialysis museum yourself. There you’ll find many of the machines that made medical history.

 

Featured items

In the 1960s, dialysis meant a machine the size of a small refrigerator. In fact, Seattle’s first machines were built by a manufacturer of ice cream machines! Today, the smallest dialysis machine is about the size of a toaster oven.

More than a dozen machines are on display in the museum. The Mini Monster, for example, was created in 1964 at the University of Washington for the world’s first home dialysis patient. It became the prototype for nearly all single-patient hemodialysis machines in use today.

A 22-foot timeline details milestones in Northwest Kidney Centers’ history, and includes artifacts like the brass nameplate from the earliest building and an original Scribner shunt.

Machines, photos and patient stories help tell the history of life-sustaining treatments in dialysis centers as well as home dialysis, a therapy that often leads to better outcomes for people with kidney failure.

 

An oral history of Northwest Kidney Centers

Northwest Kidney Centers simply wouldn’t be where it is today without the incredible community of dedicated staff, volunteers, medical professionals and financial supporters who have worked hard to carry out its mission. For our 55th anniversary year, we began gathering oral histories from people who worked for and with Northwest Kidney Centers over the years. Watch our oral history video series to hear from Jo Ann Albers, our first dialysis nurse, dialysis pioneer Dr. Bob Hegstrom, and Jack Cole, who worked with Belding Scribner to perfect the Scribner shunt.

Then and now: technology through the years

Here’s a closer look at some of the iconic machines in our dialysis museum.

  • Kolff-Brigham rotating drum kidney. Created in 1948 by Dr. Willem “Pim” Kolff, this was the world’s first practical dialysis machine. Using filters made of sausage casings, it provided dialysis for people with acute kidney failure, but there still was no treatment for chronic kidney failure. The Scribner shunt changed that in 1960.
  • Mini-I and Mini-II. Early machines to mix dialysate were so large one 1963 version earned the nickname Monster. The Mini-I was based on the Monster. It made dialysis solution by mixing a liquid concentrate with water, using highly accurate proportioning pumps. After mixing and testing, the dialysis solution was pumped to each patient’s bedside in the treatment room. A few months after the Mini-I came the Mini-II, a refined version, designed by four innovators on an airplane ride to a medical conference. It became the first commercial home dialysis machine.
  • Drake-Willock dialysis machine. Nephrologist Dr. Richard Drake and design engineer Charles Bernard Willock made this machine in the basement of Willock’s Oregon home in the mid-1960s.
  • Suitcase kidney. Developed by Dr. Eli Friedman and James T. Hutchisson in New York in 1976, this lightweight machine allowed patients to travel. Northwest Kidney Center patients were the first outside New York to use it. Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos is said to have secretly used a machine like this.
  • Boen home peritoneal dialysis cycler. Used in the 1960s, this machine includes a 40-liter bottle that was sterilized and filled with dialysate at the hospital, then delivered to the patient’s home. For each treatment, a physician made a house call to make a puncture for access.

Dialysis through the years

Visitors see machines, photos from Northwest Kidney Centers


PD machines dialysis museum

Peritoneal dialysis machines, including Boen PD cycler (left).

Dialysis museum visitors

In addition to seeing early dialysis machines, visitors can read stories about our founders and earliest patients.

Dialysis museum main gallery

Machines from the 1940s to present day.

Pay a visit

The museum is currently not accepting visitors. Relocation of the museum to Burien will be complete in March 2024. Please check back here for information on visiting the museum in its new location.

 

 

Dr. Suhail Ahmad, retired chief medical officer, and Jack Cole, original dialysis laboratory manager, look at photos in the museum's main gallery.