The MIT Well being and Life Sciences Collaborative (MIT HEALS) has introduced the institution of the Hood Pediatric Innovation Hub, an bold effort designed to drive cutting-edge innovation in youngsters’s well being care. Launched in collaboration with the Charles H. Hood Basis, the hub will concentrate on addressing unmet wants in pediatric medication by creating applied sciences and coverings tailor-made particularly for kids.
Leveraging the Institute’s strengths within the life sciences, the hub will present seed funding and strategic help for daring, high-impact analysis initiatives with the potential to rework well being care for kids. It is going to additionally act as a springboard for rising scientific leaders, empowering them to assist form the way forward for pediatric well being.
“The Hood Pediatric Innovation Hub represents a rare alternative to create significant and lasting change within the lives of youngsters,” says Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of the MIT Faculty of Engineering, MIT’s chief innovation and technique officer, and head of MIT HEALS. “By collaborating with the Charles H. Hood Basis, we’re harnessing MIT’s interdisciplinary strengths to deal with a number of the most urgent challenges in pediatric well being care.”
Addressing important gaps in pediatric well being care
Regardless of making up a good portion of the worldwide inhabitants, youngsters have been largely underserved in terms of medical innovation, leaving immense gaps in care. Pediatric situations that form a lifetime of well being and well-being usually lack devoted options — forcing reliance on repurposed grownup therapies or no resolution in any respect. From 2008 to 2018, solely 10 p.c of U.S. Meals and Drug Administration approvals had been designated for people beneath the age of 18.
There’s a huge alternative to prioritize innovation for folks throughout their youth and drive breakthroughs that not solely enhance particular person lives but additionally elevate well being outcomes for generations to come back. The Hood Pediatric Innovation Hub seeks to steer this transformation by making a devoted neighborhood for advancing applied sciences and analysis.
“We’re thrilled to collaborate with MIT to launch the hub, a daring initiative that may drive groundbreaking science and expertise for kids. MIT’s unparalleled experience in engineering and life sciences, mixed with our deep dedication to pediatric innovation, creates a robust power for change,” says Hood Basis President Neil Smiley, on behalf of the muse’s board of trustees. “We look ahead to this catalytic reward igniting transformative applications that may form the way forward for youngsters’s well being and well-being for generations to come back.”
The Hood Basis, based mostly in Massachusetts, has dedicated $15 million over 5 years to help the creation and improvement of the hub, reinforcing its long-standing dedication to advancing groundbreaking pediatric analysis. Since its institution in 1942, the Charles H. Hood Basis has sought to fill gaps within the pediatric well being care system by awarding analysis grants and supporting the event of pediatric associated instruments and coverings.
Along with its established grant applications, over the course of the previous decade the Hood Basis has served as a pioneer in supporting younger corporations attempting to carry pediatric improvements to the sufferers who want them, by the use of program-related investments made through its enterprise arm, CH Improvements LLC.
“The Hood Basis’s longstanding dedication to enhancing baby well being has led to the formation of an in depth and strong community of researchers, clinician-scientists, entrepreneurs, and different leaders in science and enterprise who stand well-positioned to have interaction with and contribute to the hub’s efforts,” provides Smiley.
A central position within the MIT Well being and Life Sciences Collaborative
The Hood Pediatric Innovation Hub, which will likely be administered within the MIT Faculty of Engineering, will function a cornerstone of MIT HEALS, an Institute-wide initiative to deal with society’s most pressing well being challenges. The hub’s cross-disciplinary strategy underscores MIT’s dedication to inspiring, accelerating, and delivering options at scale to a few of society’s most pressing and intractable well being challenges.
Elazer R. Edelman will function college lead, with Joseph J. Frassica as the chief director of the hub. Edelman is the Edward J. Poitras Professor in Medical Engineering and Science in MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) and director of MIT’s Middle for Medical and Translational Analysis. He additionally serves as a professor of drugs at Harvard Medical Faculty and a heart specialist at Brigham and Ladies’s Hospital’s cardiac intensive care unit in Boston. Frassica serves as professor of the observe in IMES at MIT. He’s additionally a member of the educating and analysis employees of the Massachusetts Normal Hospital (pediatric important care) and serves as pediatric editor for the Journal of Intensive Care Drugs.
“As scientists, engineers, and clinicians, we’re obliged to make sure that what we study and what we invent is offered to all. Satirically, these most in want of innovation are least capable of entry and profit from it — youngsters particularly. The help of the Hood Basis and collaboration with our MIT and prolonged neighborhood can assist deal with this hole and fill this very important void,” says Edelman.
“The Hood Pediatric Innovation Hub will function a catalyst, mentor, and advocate for pediatric innovation, harnessing MIT’s world-class experience and Hood’s in depth community of pediatric innovators to deal with essentially the most urgent challenges in pediatric care. Because of the beneficiant help of the Hood Basis, we plan to construct the infrastructure and applications wanted to rework groundbreaking concepts into real-world options that enhance the lives of youngsters and the suppliers who look after them,” Frassica provides.
Driving analysis, advocacy, and training
Past supporting analysis, the hub seeks to bolster the broader pediatric analysis neighborhood via outreach, training, and advocacy. By working carefully with key collaborators and leveraging relationships with different stakeholders similar to hospitals, trade, affected person advocates, and funders, the hub will determine, develop, and advance efforts to search out economically viable pathways to carry therapies to younger sufferers.
The hub may also create the infrastructure to seamlessly share deep organizational understanding of the regulatory processes governing innovation for kids with researchers and innovators within the hub neighborhood.
