NNH Interactive is the publishing arm of Northern Nephrology & Hypertension, a nephrology practice in Plattsburgh, New York.
The practice was founded in 2002 by Craig G. Hurwitz, MD, who continues to see patients with chronic kidney disease every week. He also builds NNH Interactive's modules himself. The modules are published free under a CC BY-NC-ND license and embed into any nephrology practice or CKD-serving organization that wants to use them.
This page explains where the work comes from: the clinician, the practice, the value-based care arrangement the practice participates in, and how the project is funded and sustained.
Craig is a board-certified nephrologist who has practiced in Plattsburgh, New York since 2002. He founded Northern Nephrology & Hypertension that year and has run it as a small independent practice ever since, seeing patients across the full arc of kidney disease, from early CKD through dialysis and transplant.
He trained in internal medicine and nephrology at the University of Vermont, where he then held an NIH individual research fellowship studying ion channels in the kidney. The computational and analytic work from that fellowship is where his software practice started. When he opened Northern Nephrology & Hypertension in 2002, he built custom clinical software for the practice from day one; algorithms he developed for bone-mineral metabolism and other aspects of dialysis care were later incorporated into an electronic health record used in dialysis units nationally. NNH Interactive is the latest expression of a clinician-builder practice he has run in parallel with clinical work for more than twenty years.
He has published original research in renal physiology, contributed a chapter to a medical textbook, and lectured nationally on kidney disease, including at the National Kidney Foundation's 2012 Spring Clinical Meeting, where his topic was using electronic health records to drive high-quality care in dialysis units. That talk's thesis, that well-designed clinical software is a lever for better care rather than a bureaucratic burden, is the same thesis underneath NNH Interactive.
Northern Nephrology & Hypertension is a small independent nephrology practice serving the North Country of New York: Plattsburgh and the rural counties along Lake Champlain and the Canadian border. The practice cares for patients across the full range of kidney disease, with particular focus on slowing CKD progression and preparing patients well for whatever comes next, whether that is dialysis, transplant, or conservative management.
Plattsburgh is not an academic medical center. The patient population is rural, older on average than the national mean, and disproportionately affected by the kidney-disease risk factors (diabetes, hypertension, vascular disease) that drive most CKD in the United States. Most digital health work in nephrology is built for urban academic populations and pushed outward; NNH Interactive is built from a rural practice for patients who look like the practice's own.
The modules are designed and tested in this clinical environment before they are published. Every module reflects choices about what patients in an actual nephrology clinic need to understand, in what order, and at what depth. These are decisions made by a clinician who will use the modules in his own exam rooms the following week.
Northern Nephrology & Hypertension is a participating practice in Integrated Kidney Care of Lake Erie, a Kidney Contracting Entity (KCE) in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' Kidney Care Choices model. Lake Erie comprises nine nephrology practices across New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, organized to take accountability for the total cost and quality of care for their attributed CKD and dialysis patients.
The KCE is structured as a partnership with VillageHealth, DaVita's pre-dialysis CKD care management organization, and DaVita Integrated Kidney Care. These partners provide care coordination, data infrastructure, and operational support; the participating practices provide the clinical care.
Within Lake Erie, Northern Nephrology & Hypertension is consistently among the top performers in the group on Optimal ESRD Starts: patients beginning dialysis in a planned, non-emergent way with appropriate access in place, or transitioning directly to transplant or home modalities. This performance is built on early identification of progressing CKD, structured risk stratification, and patient education that begins long before dialysis is on the horizon.
The interactive modules NNH Interactive publishes are the patient-education component of that clinical model, generalized for use by other practices.
NNH Interactive is currently funded by Northern Nephrology & Hypertension itself and by value-based care revenue earned through Lake Erie KCE participation. Educational grants from manufacturers and foundation support for specific module development are categories currently being explored, governed by explicit editorial guardrails.
The modules are free to embed under a Creative Commons license, and the funding structure is designed so that no single source can capture editorial control. Full detail on the funding model lives on the Partners page.
NNH Interactive is not a software company. It does not sell a product, it does not have customers, and it does not compete with electronic medical records, patient portals, or population-health platforms. The modules are designed to embed into whatever software environment a practice already uses.
It is also not an advocacy organization, not a research institute, and not a content marketing operation for the practice that publishes it. The modules carry no practice-specific branding when embedded elsewhere, and the editorial standard is the same whether a module is viewed in Plattsburgh or in another state.
What it is: a small, slow, deliberately scoped publishing project run by a clinician who builds software, distributed free to organizations that share the goal of patients understanding their kidney disease well enough to make good decisions about it.