Annie Usman

Annie (and Farrukh) were the two people having a BBQ in their 1-acre backyard in New Hampshire, they had a perfect life with two daughters, an American dream lifestyle, and a convertible red Mustang, and the next logical step was to move to a bigger house in Massachusetts, like most of their other friends. When they received a call from someone who needed an Automated Peritoneal Dialysis (APD) machine in the city where they grew up. Annie started calling two big companies, and they were willing to pay an MSRP of $27,000 to purchase an APD machine, but all the major companies declined. She lost loved ones due to HD complications. That was when Annie and Usman started thinking about the point of life in going to a bigger home and a nicer logo for the second car if the devices produced could not reach 86% of the world. The 14% of the world receiving these devices in the finest American clinics is 20 to 30 years old of treatment.

It was not easy to leave the comfort of my dream American lifestyle and commit to going four years without a salary. Annie is not only the co-founder and the brain behind a big dream but also the woman raising three daughters, living without a salary, and ensuring that early employees got paid on time. Annie has a degree in computer science and experience in teaching fashion design, and some of that is reflected in the X1 along with Salahuddin. She has been involved in key decisions about where to take money and when not to accept it based on the long-term value of those partnerships.

She is helping to improve the rollout of APD in Pakistan by enhancing nursing care, improving SOPs, and executing the last mile of technology. As a co-founder and Chief Information Officer, she wears multiple hats.

Annie is dedicated to implementing a vision of a world where dialysis is accessible to millions worldwide. Her leadership is not just about improving the life expectancy of dialysis patients in the USA, where we spend 44 billion dollars on dialysis yet have a worse survival rate for ESKD than breast cancer. It addresses the fundamental question of why we put acid into the human body during dialysis, which has global implications.

Among the many roles she takes on, her greatest passion lies in what she refers to as “patient obsession”. Her goal is to help one patient succeed at a time. She says, “Every woman out there, whether rich or poor, is like my own mom; every man out there is like my own dad. Once we assist them in achieving success by doing the right thing for patients, the success of our venture will be a byproduct.”