Washington, D.C.-based Children's National is ensuring that innovation means addressing the unique needs of pediatric patients, so that breakthroughs in medical technology are accessible to all, regardless of age or background.
Kolaleh Eskandanian, PhD, chief innovation officer and vice president of Children's National Hospital, told Becker's the organization's innovation efforts have been heavily focused on regulated medical products and clinical trials.
Children's National has been actively engaged with regulatory authorities like the FDA and has received a $7.5 million grant from the organization to focus on bringing pediatric devices to market.
Dr. Eskandanian said the progress in developing medical devices for children significantly lags behind that for adults due to various challenges, such as the complexities of designing devices for growing children, a small market size and a lack of financial incentives. But, with the FDA grant, Children's National will be able to assist pediatric innovators in bringing to market medical devices tailored to address the unique needs of children.
"We partner with the FDA to always be on the lookout for new regulations that are hitting right now so we can be prepared and put children at the forefront," she said.
In addition to the FDA-funded pediatric device consortium, Children's National's innovation arm, Innovation Ventures, has also established the Pediatric Technology and Device Translation Center, which aims to streamline clinical trials, with a specific focus on decentralized trials.
"We're probably one of the first to establish a center like this," Dr. Eskandanian said. "This not only helps us do clinical trials, but to do alternatives to traditional clinical trials such as pragmatic trials, adaptive trials and decentralized trials."
The hospital also has a partnership with MedTech Color, a collaborative community supported by the FDA that focuses on sourcing talent from historically marginalized populations, ensuring inclusivity in medical device innovation.
"This initiative has a focus on African American and Hispanic populations," she said. "We want to make sure these groups are not only involved, but are also having their innovations in the medical device domain, as they know how to best engage their own populations. What we are hoping to get out of this partnership is inclusion so that we can make sure patients in all populations are included in the studies that we do. If we don't include minorities in our clinical trials, we just don't get solutions for them."
Looking ahead, Dr. Eskandanian said she is excited about new streams of revenue that came to Innovation Ventures, which will go toward building new programs. This includes new partnerships with venture capital firms and major medtech companies that will focus on creating a symposium around cardiovascular and electrophysiology medical devices, and a symposium on at-home devices.