Dr. Shur has a career working as a clinical geneticist for over a decade. She has been a part of the Children’s National community for more than two years. Dr. Shur as well serves as the lead for the Telemedicine Genetics Program under the Rare Disease Institute.
For her advancements in telemedicine genetics and rare diseases, Medical Geneticist Natasha Shur, M.D., received the 2021 Rare Impact Award from the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD). The recognition is the highest honor given to individuals that developed exceptional work benefiting the rare disease community.
“Despite the pandemic and the challenges we have faced, there are still heroes to be found among us from whom we can draw inspiration and motivation to keep moving forward,” said Peter L. Saltonstall, NORD president and CEO.
Given her involvement with several innovative projects at Children’s National Hospital, Dr. Shur built an active in-home telemedicine program where patients are being seen for first visits and follow-ups. Her work is helping families, including those with autistic children.
“Recently, in our division, we have been talking a lot about the concept of ‘failing forward.’ The idea is to try new approaches. These methods may not work, but the status quo does not always work either,” said Dr. Shur. “Since we have such a supportive and wonderful group, we can try new ways of working and new models of care.”
During the pandemic, the division led by Marshall Summar,.M.D., also created a telehealth first model of care and augmented educational apps and opportunities. The goal was to ensure that patients with rare disease would not lose access to care. The medical geneticists, genetic counselors, dieticians and administrative team met daily and cohesively to explore and improve new clinical approaches in order to put patients and families first.
Dr. Shur has a career working as a clinical geneticist for over a decade. She has been a part of the Children’s National community for more than two years. Dr. Shur as well serves as the lead for the Telemedicine Genetics Program under the Rare Disease Institute.
The Rare Disease Institute recently opened its new location on the Children’s National Research & Innovation Campus, a first-of-its-kind pediatric research and innovation hub located in Washington, D.C. The campus will provide a unique, state-of-the-art home for clinical genetic and specialty services.
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Acting FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel visited Children’s National Hospital yesterday to highlight the importance of connectivity in healthcare and learn more about how the hospital is using telehealth to serve families during the pandemic. Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., has provided pediatric care for 150 years and is among the nation’s top 10 children’s hospitals. Last year, Children’s National, an academic pediatric health system, saw more than 219,000 children from the capital region and from across the country and around the world.
“So much more can be done to connect children and their families — in both urban and rural parts of the country — to the care they need not only to survive, but to thrive,” said Rosenworcel. “Telehealth can help bridge that gap by bringing specialty care available only in hospital centers to smaller clinics and even the home where problems can be addressed quickly, before they prove life threatening. I was encouraged by the creative work that Children’s National Hospital is doing to address the unique health needs of children from all backgrounds especially during these challenging times.”
Acting Chairwoman Rosenworcel was joined by her colleague FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington for a tour of the hospital, where they met with Shireen Atabaki, M.D., M.P.H., associate medical director of Telehealth, Emergency Medicine physician and program director for the COVID-19 Telehealth Program at Children’s National Hospital. The visit also included a demo of a telehealth robot by Ricardo Munoz, M.D., Cardiac Critical Care Medicine chief, and Alejandro Jose Lopez-Magallon, M.D., medical director of Telemedicine, both at Children’s National.
“The pandemic catapulted telehealth as a tool for the future of health care delivery,” said Dr. Atabaki. “With the support of the FCC, Children’s National is excited to introduce a robot and other state-of-the-art digital health technology to support provider-to-patient pediatric care and expert consultations in our hospital’s emergency departments and across our region. These innovations in telemedicine will facilitate access to specialized expertise and care of COVID-19 patients.”
In May 2020, Children’s National Hospital was approved for funding as part of the FCC’s COVID-19 Telehealth Program and established a regional pediatric telehealth consortium. This will enable the hospital to expand its telehealth platform to support 15 health care sites in the region serving children and young adults, providing care to children with COVID-19, as well as those who are medically vulnerable.
Acting Chairwoman Rosenworcel is committed to closing the digital divide and sees access to telehealth care services — especially for underserved and marginalized communities — as a top priority. To learn more about telehealth efforts at the FCC, including the COVID-19 Telehealth Program and the Connected Care Pilot Program, visit: https://www.fcc.gov/connecting-americans-health-care.
In the first two weeks of COVID-19’s major impact on the U.S., Children’s National Hospital moved most of its subspecialty in-person day-to-day clinics to virtual care. Children’s National Heart Institute was one of the first divisions to offer telehealth visits — in part because the team was an early adopter of telehealth in cardiology for both physician-to-physician consultations and direct-to-patient care, and stood poised to widely implement it.
A poster presentation at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2020 quantified how the rapid transition to direct-to-consumer telehealth services impacted families with children who have congenital heart disease. The findings were presented by first author Kristine Mehrtens, M.S., B.S.N., R.N., C.P.N., clinical manager for the Heart Institute’s Ambulatory Services.
The team found that though in-person cardiology visits decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic, direct-to-patient telehealth visits were able to partially compensate for the sudden drop.
Additionally, payer reimbursement rates for these direct-to-consumer telehealth visits were similar to in-person clinic visits.
”This is exciting as prior to COVID-19 we have seen a lower reimbursement rates for these cardiology direct-to-consumer telehealth visits compared to in-person cardiology clinic visits,” said Ashraf S. Harahsheh, M.D., a pediatric cardiologist at Children’s National Hospital who has utilized direct-to-consumer telehealth visits since 2016 and is a senior author on the new study.
Patient satisfaction scores for care providers, including the likelihood of recommending a care provider from Children’s National Hospital, was the same for telehealth follow-up visits as it was for in-person clinic visits before the pandemic.
“As a multidisciplinary team, we agreed that diagnostic studies such as echocardiograms were important to include with follow-up visits,” says Mehrtens. “Together we developed a strategy to ensure we could meet the needs of the patients and also safely conduct in-person visits when necessary.”
Why is this important?
The pandemic and the resulting temporary halt to in-person, non-urgent/emergent visits earlier this year put the most vulnerable people with congenital heart disease at high risk for complications or worsening of their existing heart disease because they are unable to follow the recommended schedule for follow-ups.
The readiness of the Children’s Heart Institute team to quickly move to a telehealth platform successfully bridged the gap between in-person visits for some patients, allowing cardiology surveillance to continue safely.
“I am proud of our team of physicians and advanced care providers,” Harahsheh concludes. “We went from three providers (8%) pre-COVID 19 to 31 (79%) providers offering direct-to-consumer telehealth visits during the pandemic.”
What’s next?
Building on previous, smaller studies of telehealth before the pandemic began, the team will continue to conduct research to assess the safety and efficacy of these telehealth visits over time. The increase in patients who are continuing to see their providers for routine follow-ups via telehealth will allow a larger sample for effective study of this care model.
American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2020 Impact of Telemedicine on Pediatric Cardiac Center’s Ambulatory Response to the 2019 Novel Coronavirus Disease (covid-19) Pandemic
P1692
9:00am – 10:00am
Fri, Nov 13 (CST)
Read additional news stories about cardiology telehealth:
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Children’s National Hospital announced a $5 million gift from The Boeing Company that will help drive lifesaving pediatric discoveries at the new Children’s National Research & Innovation Campus.
Children’s National Hospital announced a $5 million gift from The Boeing Company that will help drive lifesaving pediatric discoveries at the new Children’s National Research & Innovation Campus. The campus, now under construction, is being developed on nearly 12 acres of the former Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Children’s National will name the main auditorium in recognition of Boeing’s generosity.
“We are deeply grateful to Boeing for their support and commitment to improving the health and well-being of children in our community and around the globe,” said Kurt Newman, M.D., president and CEO of Children’s National “The Boeing Auditorium will help the Children’s National Research & Innovation campus become the destination for discussion about how to best address the next big healthcare challenges facing children and families.”
The one-of-a-kind pediatric hub will bring together public and private partners for unprecedented collaborations. It will accelerate the translation of breakthroughs into new treatments and technologies to benefit kids everywhere.
“Children’s National Hospital’s enduring mission of positively impacting the lives of our youngest community members is especially important today,” said Boeing President and CEO David Calhoun. “We’re honored to join other national and community partners to advance this work through the establishment of their Research & Innovation Campus.”
Children’s National Research & Innovation Campus partners currently include Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JLABS, Virginia Tech, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Food & Drug Administration (FDA), U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), Cerner, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, National Organization of Rare Diseases (NORD) and local government.
The 3,200 square-foot Boeing Auditorium will be the focal point of the state-of-the-art conference center on campus. Nationally renowned experts will convene with scientists, medical leaders and diplomats from around the world to foster collaborations that spur progress and disseminate findings.
Boeing’s $5 million commitment deepens its longstanding partnership with Children’s National. The company has donated nearly $2 million to support pediatric care and research at Children’s National through Chance for Life and the hospital’s annual Children’s Ball. During the coronavirus pandemic, Boeing fabricated and donated 2,000 face shields to help keep patients and frontline care providers at Children’s National safe.
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The 8th Annual Pediatric Device Innovation Symposium presented by @ChildrensNatl in conjunction with @Devices4kids took place Sept. 28-30.
The 8th Annual Pediatric Device Innovation Symposium presented by Children’s National Hospital in conjunction with the National Capital Consortium for Pediatric Medical Devices (NCC-PDI) kicked off on Monday, Sept. 28, 2020 with a panel featuring three fellow members of the FDA-funded Pediatric Device Consortia (PDC) Grants Program discussing real-world evidence and the vital role that innovation and technology play in advancing healthcare for the pediatric population.
As described by the FDA, real-world evidence (RWE) is the clinical evidence regarding the usage and potential benefits or risks of a medical product, derived from the analysis of patient data. RWE can be generated by different study designs or analyses, including but not limited to, randomized trials, including large simple trials, pragmatic trials and observational studies (prospective and/or retrospective).
The symposium panel, “Pediatric Device Consortia Update on the Use of Real-World Evidence (RWE) for Pediatric Device Innovation” examined real-world evidence (RWE) demonstration projects from Southwest Pediatric Device Consortium, UCSF-Stanford Pediatric Device Consortium and the West Coast Consortium for Technology and Innovation in Pediatrics (CTIP). The panel was moderated by Juan Espinoza, M.D., FAAP, director of CTIP.
“Real-world evidence projects are critical to the advancement of pediatric medical device innovation,” said Kolaleh Eskandanian, Ph.D., M.B.A., P.M.P., vice president and chief innovation officer at Children’s National Hospital, and principal investigator for NCC-PDI. “Bringing together our colleagues in pediatric healthcare through the symposium helps us together identify solutions that will bring medical device innovations to the market faster to benefit the children and families we all serve.”
Here are some of the key discussion points made by panelists regarding current RWE demonstration projects:
Emerging medical and consumer technologies are enabling the diabetes community to take great strides toward truly personalized, real-time, data-driven management.
“Connected” technologies such as smartphone apps, wearable devices and sensors create an ecosystem of data driven-tools that can link patients and care teams for precision management of conditions like diabetes, including predicting a hypoglycemic event.
RWE has an important future in treating rare diseases by using existing data and harnessing that to improve treatment among pediatric patients.
Through the rich data in academic healthcare systems, practitioners are better equipped to provide RWE to address important regulatory and research questions.
The creation of a pediatric device patient database, which provides real-time updates to clinical, device and patient-generated health data, offers several regulatory, safety and research advantages in advancing device innovation.
Kolaleh Eskandanian, PhD, MBA, PMP, vice president and chief innovation officer at Children’s National Hospital, and principal investigator for NCC-PDI.
The FDA currently supports RWE demonstration projects that are focused on understanding data quality, improving RWE tools and evaluating RWE approaches to study design and data analytics. Dr. Espinoza highlighted the importance of ongoing dialogue on the use of RWE as it pertains to innovations that advance pediatric healthcare across the board.
“Thank you to the NCC-PDI team for creating this opportunity for PDCs to talk about the impact of real-world evidence on pediatric medical device development and the projects we have to move that field forward,” said Dr. Espinoza, director of CTIP and principal investigator on the PDC’s RWE Demonstration Project. “These projects are intended to inform the FDA and the industry’s approach to RWE including study design, data standards, fitness for use and regulatory decision making and reproducibility. This is complicated work that involves research, IT infrastructure, clinical care and operations.”
NCC-PDI, which is led by the Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation at Children’s National Hospital and the A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland, is one of five members of the FDA’s Pediatric Device Consortia Grant Program. To date, NCC-PDI has mentored over 100 medical device sponsors to help advance their pediatric innovations, with seven devices having received either their FDA market clearance or CE marking.
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The telehealth team at Children’s National Hospital is featured in DataBank IMX’s latest Tech Talk podcast. They discuss how the organization scaled up and managed the telehealth program through the early and mid phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the future of telehealth.
Featured in the discussion are clinical, operational and revenue cycle leaders from Children’s National:
Mary Daymont, M.S.N., R.N., CCM, Vice President, Revenue Cycle & Care Management
Clarence Williams, MHA, MBA, Director, Telehealth Program
Alejandro Lopez-Magallon, M.D., Medical Director, Telehealth Program, Cardiac Critical Care Specialist
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The telehealth command center located a few steps away from the cardiac ICU at Children’s National Hospital.
The cardiac critical care team at Children’s National Hospital has developed an innovative Tele-Cardiac Critical Care model aiming to keep constant watch over the most fragile children with critical heart disease in the cardiac ICU. The system combines traditional remote monitoring and video surveillance with an artificial intelligence algorithm trained to flag early warning signs that a critically ill infant may suffer a serious event like cardiac arrest while recovering from complex cardiac surgery. This second set of eyes helps bedside teams improve patient safety and quality of care.
These high risk post-operative patients are often neonates or small infants born with the most complex and critical congenital heart diseases that require surgery or interventional cardiac catheterization in their first days or weeks of life. At these early stages after crucial cardiac surgery, these patients can decompensate dangerously fast with few outward physical symptoms.
The AI algorithm (T3) monitors miniscule changes in oxygen delivery and identifies any mismatch with a child’s oxygen needs. It also tracks and displays small changes in vital sign trends that could lead to a serious complication. The cardiac ICU command center staff then analyzes additional patient data and alerts the bedside team whenever needed.
The Tele-Cardiac Critical Care program started two years ago. In that time, the program has contributed to a significant decrease in post-operative cardiac arrest for this patient population.
“It’s easy to see how a model like this could be adapted to other critical care scenarios, including our other intensive care units and even to adult units,” says Ricardo Munoz, M.D., chief of Cardiac Critical Care and executive director of Telehealth. It allows the physicians and nurses to keep constant watch over these fragile patients without requiring a physician to monitor every heartbeat in person for every patient at every hour of the day to maintain optimal outcomes for all of them.”
Dr. Munoz and Alejandro Lopez-Magallon, M.D., medical director of Telehealth and cardiac critical care specialist, presented data from the pilot program at the American Telemedicine Association’s virtual Annual Meeting on June 26, 2020.
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“Innovation in children’s medical devices consistently lags behind that of adults and we need to change that if we are to confront the challenge to children’s health of COVID-19 and future pandemics,” said Kolaleh Eskandanian, Ph.D., MBA, PMP, vice president and chief innovation officer at Children’s National Hospital and principal investigator of NCC-PDI.
As medical data increasingly highlights the serious impact of COVID-19 on children’s health, the National Capital Consortium for Pediatric Device Innovation (NCC-PDI) announces a special pitch competition focused on COVID-19-related pediatric medical devices that support home health monitoring and telehealth, and improve sustainability, resiliency and readiness in diagnosing and treating children during a pandemic.
“Despite early reports that COVID-19 posed less of a threat to children, a recent study published by Children’s National shows that considerable numbers of pediatric patients are hospitalized and become critically ill from the disease,” said Kolaleh Eskandanian, Ph.D., MBA, PMP, vice president and chief innovation officer at Children’s National Hospital and principal investigator of NCC-PDI. “Innovation in children’s medical devices consistently lags behind that of adults and we need to change that if we are to confront the challenge to children’s health of COVID-19 and future pandemics.”
Funding for the competition is made possible by a grant from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and a philanthropic gift from Mei Xu, founder of e-commerce platform Yes She May, a site dedicated to women-owned brands.
Along with grant funding, one company from the competition will be selected by Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JLABS to receive a one-year residency at JLABS @ Washington, DC, which will be located on the new Children’s National Research & Innovation Campus currently under construction. In addition to the 2021 JLABS residency, the awardee will have access to the JLABS community and expert mentoring by the Johnson & Johnson family of companies.
Submissions for the competition are being accepted now through Monday, July 6, 2020z at the NCC-PDI website, Innovate4Kids.org, where complete details can be found.
NCC-PDI is one of five members in the FDA’s Pediatric Device Consortia Grant Program created to support the development and commercialization of medical devices for children, which lags significantly behind the progress of adult medical devices. Along with Children’s National, University of Maryland and Medtech Innovator, NCC-PDI members include accelerator BioHealth Innovation and design firm Archimedic.
To date, NCC-PDI has mentored over 100 medical device sponsors to help advance their pediatric innovations, with seven devices having received either their FDA market clearance or CE marking. The consortium hosts a major pediatric pitch competition annually that showcases and awards promising pediatric innovations and provides a first-of-its-kind pediatric-focused accelerator program for finalists.
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Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., was ranked No. 7 nationally in the U.S. News & World Report 2020-21 Best Children’s Hospitals annual rankings. This marks the fourth straight year Children’s National has made the list, which ranks the top 10 children’s hospitals nationwide.
In addition, its neonatology program, which provides newborn intensive care, ranked No.1 among all children’s hospitals for the fourth year in a row.
For the tenth straight year, Children’s National also ranked in all 10 specialty services, with seven specialties ranked in the top 10.
“Our number one goal is to provide the best care possible to children. Being recognized by U.S. News as one of the best hospitals reflects the strength that comes from putting children and their families first, and we are truly honored,” says Kurt Newman, M.D., president and CEO of Children’s National Hospital.
“This year, the news is especially meaningful, because our teams — like those at hospitals across the country — faced enormous challenges and worked heroically through a global pandemic to deliver excellent care.”
“Even in the midst of a pandemic, children have healthcare needs ranging from routine vaccinations to life-saving surgery and chemotherapy,” said Ben Harder, managing editor and chief of Health Analysis at U.S. News. “The Best Children’s Hospitals rankings are designed to help parents find quality medical care for a sick child and inform families’ conversations with pediatricians.”
The annual rankings are the most comprehensive source of quality-related information on U.S. pediatric hospitals. The rankings recognize the nation’s top 50 pediatric hospitals based on a scoring system developed by U.S. News. The top 10 scorers are awarded a distinction called the Honor Roll.
The bulk of the score for each specialty service is based on quality and outcomes data. The process includes a survey of relevant specialists across the country, who are asked to list hospitals they believe provide the best care for patients with the most complex conditions.
Below are links to the seven Children’s National specialty services that U.S. News ranked in the top 10 nationally:
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Children’s National Research Institute directors Vittorio Gallo, Ph.D., and Mark Batshaw, M.D.
The Children’s National Research Institute recently released its 2019-2020 academic annual report, titled 150 Years Stronger Through Discovery and Care to mark the hospital’s 150th birthday. Not only does the annual report give an overview of the institute’s research and education efforts, but it also gives a peek in to how the institute has mobilized to address the coronavirus pandemic.
“Our inaugural research program in 1947 began with a budget of less than $10,000 for the study of polio — a pressing health problem for Washington’s children at the time and a pandemic that many of us remember from our own childhoods,” says Vittorio Gallo, Ph.D., chief research officer at Children’s National Hospital and scientific director at Children’s National Research Institute. “Today, our research portfolio has grown to more than $75 million, and our 314 research faculty and their staff are dedicated to finding answers to many of the health challenges in childhood.”
Highlights from the Children’s National Research Institute annual report
In 2018, Children’s National began construction of its new Research & Innovation Campus (CNRIC) on 12 acres of land transferred by the U.S. Army as part of the decommissioning of the former Walter Reed Army Medical Center campus. In 2020, construction on the CNRIC will be complete, and in 2012, the Children’s National Research Institute will begin to transition to the campus.
In late 2019, a team of scientists led by Eric Vilain, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Center for Genetic Medicine Research, traveled to the Democratic Republic of Congo to collect samples from 60 individuals that will form the basis of a new reference genome data set. The researchers hope their project will generate better reference genome data for diverse populations, starting with those of Central African descent.
A gift of $5.7 million received by the Center for Translational Research’s director, Lisa Guay-Woodford, M.D., will reinforce close collaboration between research and clinical care to improve the care and treatment of children with polycystic kidney disease and other inherited renal disorders.
The Center for Neuroscience Research’s integration into the infrastructure of Children’s National Hospital has created a unique set of opportunities for scientists and clinicians to work together on pressing problems in children’s health.
Children’s National and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases are tackling pediatric research across three main areas of mutual interest: primary immune deficiencies, food allergies and post-Lyme disease syndrome. Their shared goal is to conduct clinical and translational research that improves what we know about those conditions and how we care for children who have them.
An immunotherapy trial has allowed a little boy to be a kid again. In the two years since he received cellular immunotherapy, Matthew has shown no signs of a returning tumor — the longest span of time he’s been tumor-free since age 3.
In the past 6 years, the 104 device projects that came through the National Capital Consortium for Pediatric Device Innovation accelerator program raised $148,680,256 in follow-on funding.
Even though he’s watched more than 500 aspiring physicians pass through the Children’s National pediatric residency program, program director Dewesh Agrawal, M.D., still gets teary at every graduation.
Understanding and treating the novel coronavirus (COVID-19)
In a short period of time, Children’s National Research Institute has mobilized its scientists to address COVID-19, focusing on understanding the virus and advancing solutions to ameliorate the impact today and for future generations. Children’s National Research Institute Director Mark Batshaw, M.D., highlighted some of these efforts in the annual report:
Eric Vilain, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Center for Genetic Medicine Research, is looking at whether or not the microbiome of bacteria in the human nasal tract acts as a defensive shield against COVID-19.
Catherine Bollard, M.D., MBChB, director of the Center for Cancer and Immunology Research, and her team are seeing if they can “train” T cells to attack the invading coronavirus.
Sarah Mulkey, M.D., Ph.D., an investigator in the Center for Neuroscience Research and the Fetal Medicine Institute, is studying the effects of, and possible interventions for, coronavirus on the developing brain.
You can view the entire Children’s National Research Institute academic annual report online.
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Telehealth is more than a doctor-to-patient tool during COVID-19. Experts in congenital heart disease meet weekly to share details about how it affects their vulnerable patients.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth has been crucial in allowing doctors to maintain safe contact with patients who require ongoing medical care without an office visit. Just as important is the role that telehealth is playing to connect care providers with each other to ensure that everyone around the world has the information they need to provide the best care possible for this swift-moving disease.
One good example of this specialist-to-specialist thought leadership connection is the ongoing weekly meeting hosted by the Children’s National Hospital cardiac critical care specialists. Since early in the spread of COVID-19, the Cardiac-ICU team, led by cardiovascular specialists including Ricardo Munoz, M.D., chief of cardiac critical care medicine and executive director of telehealth at Children’s National, have connected pediatric clinicians around the world to discuss how best to care for particularly vulnerable patients with pre-existing heart diseases, and to discuss breaking news in epidemiology of the disease and the effectiveness of various treatment approaches.
The video conference attracts hundreds of physicians and nurses who specialize in pediatric cardiac care from countries all over the world. In the last week of April, the meeting featured a late-breaking session to discuss new pediatric intensive care observations of inflammatory symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease, which were being detected in the United Kingdom, Paris and the United States. While more information is needed about this discovery, the ability of these experts to gather and compare disease phenotypes from country to country facilitates both the additional classification of pediatric-related symptoms and improves how all centers, no matter their location, can prepare to treat children who present locally with these symptoms.
In recent weeks, cardiac physicians and nurses from some of the world’s hardest hit regions, including Italy and Spain, have shared detailed information about their on-the-ground experiences to help colleagues in the U.S. and elsewhere better prepare for new developments.
“This new disease is a moving target, especially when it comes to understanding how it might impact children and adults with existing cardiac disease, particularly those with congenital heart disease,” says Dr. Munoz. “It is extremely important that we learn from each other, especially when we are able to connect with our colleagues in the epicenters of the most serious outbreaks of COVID-19. We are happy to host this important weekly meeting with the goal of helping every specialist keep as many patients with cardiac diseases as safe as possible throughout the global health emergency.”
Karin S. Walsh, Psy.D., and Gerard Gioia, Ph.D., in the Division of Neuropsychology pilot robotic telepresence technology to improve video visits.
The telehealth program at Children’s National Hospital continues to expand access to remote specialty care for families, as well as increase consultation and liaison services to hospitals and clinicians who lack specialty care services on site. The Children’s National Division of Neuropsychology has been a leader in adopting multiple telehealth services including direct-to-consumer video visits, psychotherapy video visits, provider consultations and provider training and supervision.
Telehealth as a whole has been shown to increase access to care, with video visits in particular showing greater clinical and educational impact compared to telephone communications. Despite this, one key limitation has been the immobility of technology used to capture video visits.
To solve for immobility, Karin S. Walsh, Psy.D., is leading a pilot study testing the feasibility and acceptability of telepresence robotics in the division. Robot telepresence devices provide a unique approach to video visits, allowing for extended physical mobility and presence, while expanding interactions between providers and patients, supervisors and trainees and in educational interactions. Traditional video visits demonstrate good feasibility and acceptability by patients, families and staff. This new approach aims to increase the “presence” of the provider and further improve clinical impact, educational impact and patient satisfaction.
The division will initially incorporate two robots into clinical care beginning in May 2020. The pilot study is expected to be carried out over the next 12-18 months, which is particularly timely given the COVID-19 pandemic. The robots, from Double Robotics, offer a high-tech, secure, integrated platform in a device that is user friendly and effective for moving freely through the clinical environment.
“With the addition of the telepresence robots, we anticipate an increase in the quality of care and access for patients and families to neuropsychological specialty care,” says Dr. Walsh. “In addition, given the geographic separation of the program – faculty and trainees are spread across six different locations – the versatile technology will increase the division’s ability to include clinicians with particular expertise into clinical sessions and consultations, as well as in training programs.”
After the pilot study, the team will assess the acceptability of robotic telepresence technology and the special qualities that this modality may offer to enhance quality of care within neuropsychology and within collaborating medical teams.
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Patients and staff at the Uganda Heart Institute for RHD-related heart surgeries in Uganda, March 2020. These patients were originally scheduled as part of the cancelled medical mission, but UHI cardiovascular surgeon successfully managed these cases without the support of the mission doctors from the U.S.
In early March as countries around the globe began to wrestle with how best to tackle the spread of COVID-19, a group of doctors, nurses, researchers and other medical staff from Children’s National Hospital were wrestling with a distinct set of challenges: What to do about the 10 Ugandan children and adults who were currently scheduled for lifesaving heart surgery (and the countless others who would benefit from the continued training of the local heart surgery team) to correct complications of rheumatic heart disease (RHD) during an impending medical mission in the country.
Rheumatic heart disease impacts over 39 million people globally and causes nearly 300,000 deaths per year. RHD is the result of frequent, untreated streptococcal throat infections in childhood that ultimately cause the body’s immune system to repeatedly damage heart valves. It is completely preventable, yet the majority of the world’s children still live in impoverished and overcrowded conditions that predispose them to RHD. Most patients present with advanced valvular heart disease. For example, in Uganda, an RHD registry includes over 600 children with clinical RHD, of which nearly 40% die within four years and the median survival time from enrollment in the registry is only nine months. For these patients, heart surgery is the only viable solution for long-term survival and normal quality of life.
Patricia: 9-year-old from Gulu (northern Uganda), had mitral valve replacement and was doing well on a recent follow-up visit at her home.
The scheduled trip from Washington was part of a nearly 20-year partnership** between doctors, nurses, researchers and other medical staff in the United States, including Craig Sable, M.D., associate chief of cardiology, and and Pranava Sinha, M.D.,pediatric cardiovascular surgeon, at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., and the Uganda Heart Institute in Kampala, Uganda. The partnership aims to tackle RHD head-on. It provides surgical skill transfer, allows for treatment of more complex patients, and increases sustainable surgical capacity for Uganda’s RHD patients over time. As a result, over the last 15 years more than 1,000 children have received lifesaving heart surgery in Uganda, with the Uganda Heart Institute (UHI) performing one to two heart valve surgeries every two weeks over the last few years.
Jackline: 12-year-old from Gulu, had mitral valve repair and aortic valve replacement. Jackline and Patricia were diagnosed through one of our research programs and benefit from our novel telehealth program, which helps connect patients from remote parts of Uganda to specialists at UHI.
COVID-19 was changing the current plan, however. Travel between countries was limited, and the team from the U.S. wouldn’t have been permitted to leave the U.S. and return according to schedule. The trip, and the support teams who were scheduled to arrive to help with the surgeries, were cancelled. The U.S. team members who had already arrived in Uganda were sent home after helping their UHI colleagues set up and prepare for the surgeries as much as possible. Knowing that patients and families were counting on the surgery mission to go forward after waiting for months or years to have surgery for heart valve disease, UHI decided not to cancel the majority of the surgeries. Instead, for the first time, they planned and successfully completed five valve-related cases in a single week – several of them quite complex. The cardiologists and cardiac surgeons from Children’s National who were supposed to be in-country for these procedures were forced to limit their in person assistance to the set-up activities the week prior to surgery and telehealth consult during the procedures.
“It was hard not to be able to stay and work with the UHI team to help these families,” says Dr. Sable. “But we are so proud of the UHI team for meeting this challenge on their own. We knew they had the skills to perform at this volume and complexity. It’s a proud moment to see the team accomplish this major milestone, and to see the patients they cared for thrive.”
The patients are the most important outcome: The five who had successful open-heart surgery are all doing well, either on their way to recovery or already discharged to their communities, where they will, for the first time in memory, be able to play, exercise and go to school or work.
Longer term, this success demonstrates the UHI medical team’s ability to manage greater surgical capacity even when surgical missions from the U.S. resume. The partnership’s goal is to complete at least 1,000 annual operations (both pediatric and adult), with the majority being performed by the local team. Having this capacity available will mean the difference between life and death for many children and adults who have RHD in Uganda and the surrounding countries.
**This work is supported by the Edwards Life Sciences/Thoracic Surgery Foundation, the Emirates Airline Foundation, Samaritan’s Purse Children’s Heart Project and Gift of Life International.
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Dr. Tosi and colleagues presented on the NIH Rare Disease Day 2020 panel, Nontraditional Approaches to Improving Access for Rare Diseases.
As part of the global observance of Rare Disease Day in February, the NCATS and NIH Clinical Center hosted a special event to raise awareness about rare diseases, the people they affect and NIH research collaborations under way to address scientific challenges and advance new treatments.
This year, Children’s National Hospital orthopaedic surgeon Laura Tosi, M.D., took part in an afternoon panel, Nontraditional Approaches to Improving Access for Rare Diseases, where she outlined her work as the faculty chair of the Rare Bone Disease TeleECHO, a virtual meeting that allows care providers and experts to come together via the Zoom platform, discuss diagnosis of specific disorders and present cases for group input.
Dr. Tosi and the Rare Bone Disease Alliance have called Project ECHO Rare Bone Disease a game changer for care of these complex conditions. Rare bone disorders are only about 5% of all birth defects but include 461 skeletal disorders caused by 437 genes – making it difficult for any physician to see enough cases of any one disorder to correctly diagnose and treat it.
“Most doctors are like me, a pediatric orthopaedic surgeon. I need to know a lot of different rare diseases and it’s hard to keep everybody on the cutting edge,” Dr. Tosi says. “Even though we have found the genes for most of the disorders, the phenotypic overlaps, shortage of specialists and the multi-disciplinary needs of so many of the patients add to the challenges.”
So 7 months ago, Dr. Tosi joined together with colleagues at the Rare Bone Disease Alliance and the Osteogenesis Imperfecta Foundation to launch Project ECHO Rare Bone Disease. The now monthly telehealth meeting engages a distinguished faculty of experts from around the world and from across the spectrum of care for these rare bone disorders, including specialists in genetics, endocrinology, orthopaedics and others.
Project ECHO is a specific model for bridging distance and creating a network of professionals, with the goal of leveling the playing field for all by making vital information accessible to everyone, regardless of their location. In healthcare the model transcends traditional “telemedicine,” however. The program, launched from the University of New Mexico, self-describes itself as “telementoring, a guided practice where the participating clinician retains responsibility for the patient” but is able to discuss diagnosis and therapeutic recommendations with a set of esteemed faculty via a regular virtual meeting series.
In the case of the Rare Bone Disease TeleECHO, the ECHO’s faculty decided on two major foci for the curriculum. Half of the content is about how to make the right diagnosis and the other half shares the latest information about specific diseases. The sessions also offer free CME to attendees.
Dr. Tosi says that while finding cases to discuss can sometimes be challenging when it comes to rare bone diseases, she takes responsibility on herself to make sure the content is robust each month. So far the meetings have attracted between 40 and 90 participants per session – a great engagement rate for such a young teleECHO program.
“I believe ECHO advances knowledge of healthcare and democratizes it by offering universal accessibility across the globe,” Tosi notes.
The Rare Bone Disease Alliance, which consists of 12 organizations, experts and patient families working together, is now deciding what’s next for the Rare Bone Disease TeleECHO. They may develop disorder-specific ECHOs, are studying the frequency of the sessions and how best to improve participation for all sessions. The idea is to increase access to this expertise even further, as it could have critical impacts on patients worldwide living with these rare diseases.
In terms of key take-aways from the panel of experts at Rare Disease Day, the hope is that more disease groups might leverage this type of technology to connect people in nontraditional ways. Doing so has the potential to ensure that everyone with a rare disease receives the best support and care possible because their doctors have the knowledge they need when they need it.
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Colombian infants exposed to Zika virus in the womb showed neurodevelopmental delays as toddlers, despite having “normal” brain imaging and head circumference at birth, a finding that underscores the importance of long-term neurodevelopmental follow-up for Zika-exposed infants.
Colombian infants exposed to Zika virus in the womb showed neurodevelopmental delays as toddlers, despite having “normal” brain imaging and head circumference at birth, a finding that underscores the importance of long-term neurodevelopmental follow-up for Zika-exposed infants, according to a cohort study published online Jan. 6, 2020, in JAMA Pediatrics.
“These infants had no evidence of Zika deficits or microcephaly at birth. Neurodevelopmental deficits, including declines in mobility and social cognition, emerged in their first year of life even as their head circumference remained normal,” says Sarah B. Mulkey, M.D. Ph.D., a fetal/neonatal neurologist at Children’s National Hospital and the study’s first author. “About one-third of these newborns who underwent postnatal head ultrasound had nonspecific imaging results, which we believe are the first published results finding a link between subtle brain injuries and impaired neuromotor development in Zika-exposed children.”
The multi-institutional research group led by Children’s National enrolled pregnant women in Atlántico Department, which hugs the Caribbean coast of Colombia, who had been exposed to Zika, and performed a series of fetal magnetic resonance images (MRI) and ultrasounds as their pregnancies progressed.
Even though their mothers had laboratory-confirmed Zika infections, 77 out of 82 of their offspring were born with no sign of congenital Zika syndrome, a constellation of birth defects that includes severe brain abnormalities, eye problems and congenital contractures, and 70 underwent additional testing of neurodevelopment during infancy. These apparently normal newborns were born between Aug. 1, 2016, and Nov. 30, 2017, at the height of the Zika epidemic, and had normal head circumference.
When they were 4 to 8 months or 9 to 18 months of age, the infants’ neurodevelopment was evaluated using two validated tools, the Warner Initial Developmental Evaluation of Adaptive and Functional Skills (a 50-item test of such skills as self-care, mobility, communication and social cognition) and the Alberta Infant Motor Scale (a motor examination of infants in prone, supine, sitting and standing positions). Some infants were assessed during each time point.
Women participating in the study were highly motivated, with 91% following up with appointments, even if it meant traveling hours by bus. In addition to Children’s National faculty traveling to Colombia to train staff how to administer the screening instruments, videotaped assessments, MRIs and ultrasounds were read, analyzed and scored at Children’s National. According to the study team, the U.S. scoring of Alberta Infant Motor Scale tests administered in Colombia is also unprecedented for a research study and offers the potential of remote scoring of infants’ motor skill maturity in regions of the world where pediatric specialists, like child neurologists, are lacking.
“Normally, neurodevelopment in infants and toddlers continues for years, building a sturdy neural network that they later use to carry out complex neurologic and cognitive functions as children enter school,” Dr. Mulkey adds. “Our findings underscore the recommendations by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that all infants exposed to Zika in the womb undergo long-term follow-up, providing an opportunity to intervene earlier.”
An accompanying editorial by CDC staffers concurs, saying the study reported “intriguing data” that add “to the growing evidence of the need for long-term follow-up for all children with Zika virus exposure in utero to ensure they receive the recommended clinical evaluations even when no structural defects are identified at birth.”
In addition to Dr. Mulkey, study co-authors include Margarita Arroyave-Wessel, MPH, Dorothy I. Bulas, M.D., chief of Diagnostic Imaging and Radiology, JiJi Jiang, MS, Stephanie Russo, BS, Robert McCarter, ScD, research section head, design and biostatistics, Adré J. du Plessis, M.B.Ch.B., MPH, chief of the Division of Fetal and Transitional Medicine, and co-Senior Author, Roberta L. DeBiasi, MD, MS, chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, all of Children’s National; Colleen Peyton, PT, DPT, of Northwestern University; Yamil Fourzali, M.D., of Sabbag Radiologos, Barranquilla, Colombia; Michael E. Msall, M.D., of University of Chicago Comer Children’s Hospital; and co-Senior Author, Carlos Cure, M.D., BIOMELab, Barranquilla, Colombia.
Funding for the research described in this post was provided by the Thrasher Research Fund, the National Institutes of Health under award Nos. UL1TR001876 and KL2TR001877, and the Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disorders Training Program under grant HRSA/MCHB T73 MC11047.
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Recently, Kurt Newman, M.D., president and CEO of Children’s National Hospital, authored an opinion piece for the popular political website, The Hill. In the article, he called upon stakeholders from across the landscape to address the significant innovation gap in children’s healthcare versus adults.
As Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Children’s Hospital Association, Dr. Newman knows the importance of raising awareness among policy makers at the federal and state level about the healthcare needs of children. Dr. Newman believes that children’s health should be a national priority that is addressed comprehensively. With years of experience as a pediatric surgeon, he is concerned by the major inequities in the advancements of children’s medical devices and technologies versus those for adults. That’s why Children’s National is working to create collaborations, influence policies and facilitate changes that will accelerate the pace of pediatric healthcare innovation for the benefit of children everywhere. One way that the hospital is tackling this challenge is by developing the Children’s National Research & Innovation Campus, which will be the nation’s first innovation campus focused on pediatric research.
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Children’s National Hospital and Virginia Tech create formal partnership that includes the launch of a Virginia Tech biomedical research facility within the new Children’s National Research & Innovation Campus.
Children’s National Hospital and Virginia Tech recently announced a formal partnership that will include the launch of a 12,000-square-foot Virginia Tech biomedical research facility within the new Children’s National Research & Innovation Campus. The campus is an expansion of Children’s National that is located on a nearly 12-acre portion of the former Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. and is set to open its first phase in December 2020. This new collaboration brings together Virginia Tech, a top tier academic research institution, with Children’s National, a U.S. News and World Report top 10 children’s hospital, on what will be the nation’s first innovation campus focused on pediatric research.
“Virginia Tech is an ideal partner to help us deliver on what we promised for the Children’s National Research & Innovation Campus – an ecosystem that enables us to accelerate the translation of potential breakthrough discoveries into new treatments and technologies,” says Kurt Newman, M.D., president and CEO, Children’s National. “Our clinical expertise combined with Virginia Tech’s leadership in engineering and technology, and its growing emphasis on biomedical research, will be a significant advance in developing much needed treatment and cures to save children’s lives.”
Earlier this year, Children’s National announced a collaboration with Johnson & Johnson Innovation LLC to launch JLABS @ Washington, DC at the Research & Innovation Campus. The JLABS @ Washington, DC site will be open to pharmaceutical, medical device, consumer and health technology companies that are aiming to advance the development of new drugs, medical devices, precision diagnostics and health technologies, including applications in pediatrics.
“We are proud to welcome Virginia Tech to our historic Walter Reed campus – a campus that is shaping up to host some of the top minds, talent and innovation incubators in the world,” says Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser. “The new Children’s National Research & Innovation Campus will exemplify why D.C. is the capital of inclusive innovation – because we are a city committed to building the public and private partnerships necessary to drive discoveries, create jobs, promote economic growth and keep D.C. at the forefront of innovation and change.”
Faculty from the Children’s National Research Institute and the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at Virginia Tech Carilion (VTC) have worked together for more than a decade, already resulting in shared research grants, collaborative publications and shared intellectual property. Together, the two institutions will now expand their collaborations to develop new drugs, medical devices, software applications and other novel treatments for cancer, rare diseases and other disorders.
“Joining with Children’s National in the nation’s capital positions Virginia Tech to improve the health and well-being of infants and children around the world,” says Virginia Tech President Tim Sands, Ph.D. “This partnership resonates with our land-grant mission to solve big problems and create new opportunities in Virginia and D.C. through education, technology and research.”
The partnership with Children’s National adds to Virginia Tech’s growing footprint in the Washington D.C. region, which includes plans for a new graduate campus in Alexandria, Va. with a human-centered approach to technological innovation. Sands said the proximity of the two locations – just across the Potomac – will enable researchers to leverage resources, and will also create opportunities with the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Va. and the Virginia Tech Carilion Health Science and Technology campus in Roanoke, Va.
Carilion Clinic and Children’s National have an existing collaboration for provision of certain specialized pediatric clinical services. The more formalized partnership between Virginia Tech and Children’s National will drive the already strong Virginia Tech-Carilion Clinic partnership, particularly for children’s health initiatives and facilitate collaborations between all three institutions in the pediatric research and clinical service domains.
Children’s National and Virginia Tech will engage in joint faculty recruiting, joint intellectual property, joint training of students and fellows, and collaborative research projects and programs according to Michael Friedlander, Ph.D., Virginia Tech’s vice president for health sciences and technology, and executive director of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC.
“The expansion and formalization of our partnership with Children’s National is extremely timely and vital for pediatric research innovation and for translating these innovations into practice to prevent, treat and ultimately cure nervous system cancer in children,” says Friedlander, who has collaborated with Children’s National leaders and researchers for more than 20 years. “Both Virginia Tech and Children’s National have similar values and cultures with a firm commitment to discovery and innovation in the service of society.”
“Brain and other nervous system cancers are among the most common cancers in children (alongside leukemia),” says Friedlander. “With our strength in neurobiology including adult brain cancer research in both humans and companion animals at Virginia Tech and the strength of Children’s National research in pediatric cancer, developmental neuroscience and intellectual disabilities, this is a perfect match.”
The design of the Children’s National Research & Innovation Campus not only makes it conducive for the hospital to strengthen its prestigious partnerships with Virginia Tech and Johnson & Johnson, it also fosters synergies with federal agencies like the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, which will collaborate with JLABS @ Washington, DC to establish a specialized innovation zone to develop responses to health security threats. As more partners sign on, this convergence of key public and private institutions will accelerate discoveries and bring them to market faster for the benefit of children and adults.
“The Children’s National Research & Innovation Campus pairs an inspirational mission to find new treatments for childhood illness and disease with the ideal environment for early stage companies. I am confident the campus will be a magnet for big ideas and will be an economic boost for Washington DC and the region,” says Jeff Zients, who was appointed chair of the Children’s National Board of Directors effective October 1, 2019. As a CEO and the former director of President Obama’s National Economic Council, Zients says that “When you bring together business, academia, health care and government in the right setting, you create a hotbed for innovation.”
Ranked 7th in National Institutes of Health research funding among pediatric hospitals, Children’s National continues to foster collaborations as it prepares to open its first 158,000-square-foot phase of its Research & Innovation Campus. These key partnerships will enable the hospital to fulfill its mission of keeping children top of mind for healthcare innovation and research while also contributing to Washington D.C.’s thriving innovation economy.
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Through a new partnership with Sabará Hospital Infantil in São Paulo, Brazil, Children’s National Hospital will provide access to pediatric cardiac intensive care specialists and consultations via telehealth. This is the first international telehealth offering from Children’s National for pediatric cardiac critical care.
The partnership includes sharing care proposals, second opinion for complex cardiology cases, alignment with international benchmarks, adoption of diagnostic and therapeutic protocols, development of critical mass for continuous process improvement and continued training. Joint multidisciplinary visits will also be carried out to help Sabará validate and improve existing protocols and learn about innovations and service improvement opportunities.
Children’s National will also provide teleconference-based training for Sabará nursing staff and second opinions through medical teleconsultation with specialists in all areas of pediatric cardiology, based on each patient’s individual needs.
“It is an honor to partner with Sabará Hospital lnfantil,” says Ricardo Munoz, M.D., executive director of Telemedicine and chief of Cardiac Critical Care at Children’s National. “We look forward to working together toward our shared goal of providing the best health care possible for the children in Brazil.”
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Virtual cardiology follow-ups via computer or smartphone are a feasible alternative to in-person patient follow-ups for some pediatric cardiac conditions.
A poster presentation at the AHA Scientific Sessions shows successful implementation of virtual care delivered directly to patients and families via technology.
Health provider follow-ups delivered via computer or smartphone is a feasible alternative to in-person patient follow-ups for some pediatric cardiac conditions, according to the findings of a pilot study presented at the AHA Scientific Sessions this week.
“We’ve used telemedicine in pediatric cardiology for physician-to-physician communications for years at Children’s National, thanks to cardiologists like Dr. Craig Sable,” says Ashraf Harahsheh, M.D., cardiologist at Children’s National Hospital and senior author of the study. “But this is the first time we’ve really had the appropriate technology to speak directly to patients and their families in their homes instead of requiring an in-person visit.”
“We developed it [telemedicine] into a primary every day component of reading echocardiograms around the region and the globe,” says Craig Sable, M.D., associate chief of cardiology at Children’s National. “Telemedicine has enabled doctors at Children’s National to extend our reach to improve the care of children and avoid unnecessary transport, family travel and lost time from work.”
Participants in the virtual visit pilot study were previously established patients with hyperlipidemia, hypercholesterolemia, syncope, or who needed to discuss cardiac testing results. The retrospective sample included 18 families who met the criteria and were open to the virtual visit/telehealth follow up option between 2016 and 2019. Six months after their virtual visit, none of the participants had presented urgently with a cardiology issue. While many (39%) had additional visits with cardiology scheduled as in person, none of those subsequent in-person visits were a result of a deficiency related to the virtual visit.
“There are many more questions to be answered about how best to appropriately use technology advances that allow us to see and hear our patients without requiring them to travel a great distance,” adds Dr. Harahsheh. “But my team and I were encouraged by the results of our small study, and by the anecdotal positive reviews from families who participated. We’re looking forward to determining how we can successfully and cost-effectively implement these approaches as additional options for our families to get the care they need.”
The project was supported by the Research, Education, Advocacy, and Child Health Care (REACH) program within the Children’s National Hospital Pediatric Residency Program.
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Direct-to-Consumer Cardiology Telemedicine: A Single Large Academic Pediatric Center Experience Aaron A. Phillips, M.D., Craig A. Sable, M.D., FAAP; Christina Waggaman, M.S.; and Ashraf S. Harahsheh, M.D., F.A.C.C., F.A.A.P.
Poster Presentation by first author Aaron Phillips, M.D., a third-year resident at Children’s National CH.APS.12 – Man vs. Machine: Tech in Kids AHA Scientific Sessions 2019
November 17, 2019
12:30 -1:00 p.m.
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The School-Based Telehealth Program provides students quick access to medical care, rapid diagnosis of medical conditions, and better management of chronic conditions like asthma and diabetes, while minimizing time away from school for children – and from work for parents.
Children’s National Hospital and Whittle School & Studios announced a collaboration to provide students at the Whittle School’s D.C. campus with on-site video connectivity to health professionals at the hospital throughout the 2019-20 school year.
“We are thrilled to collaborate with Children’s National to offer our students world-class medical care from compassionate providers,” said Dennis Bisgaard, head of Whittle’s D.C. campus. “The health and safety of our students is our top priority, and this new collaboration ensures that they’ll be in excellent hands.”
A registered nurse from Children’s National will work on-site at Whittle’s D.C. campus to provide acute care, first aid, immunization record-keeping, medication management, EpiPen storage and training and more.
Children’s National’s School-Based Telehealth Program will also be available at the Whittle School. The on-site nurse will have the ability to use secure video-conferencing technology to connect students with board-certified physicians from Children’s National, if necessary.
The School-Based Telehealth Program provides students quick access to medical care, rapid diagnosis of medical conditions, and better management of chronic conditions like asthma and diabetes, while minimizing time away from school for children – and from work for parents. The program will complement existing care the student may already receive from their medical home or primary care provider.
“We are excited to collaborate with the Whittle School to design a program centered on our shared vision of helping children,” said Denice Cora-Bramble, M.D., executive vice president and chief medical officer, ambulatory and community health services at Children’s National. “Our goal is that this new collaboration will provide access to highly-specialized health care expertise to patients and families and our hope is that school-based nursing services, coupled with telehealth technology, will improve students’ health and education outcomes.”
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