Addressing A Lack of Funding In Pediatric Digital Health

The following is a guest article by Brad Sitler from the Bear Institute for Health Innovation.  Be sure to check out their Bear Institute PACK, a pediatric accelerator challenge for kids.

The digital health innovation space has grown exponentially over the past 10 years, with $2 billion invested in 2011 and $44 billion invested in 2021 by the global financial and corporate markets. This represents a 20x increase, however, the increase has not been equal across all segments of healthcare. One segment of healthcare that did not see an increase in investment is children’s digital health, which received less than 1% ($167 million) of global digital health funding ($22 billion) in 2020, according to StartUp Health’s annual report on digital health funding.

Start-ups focused on pediatric digital health face unique challenges because the market is stratified by children’s age and weight, leading to small market segments and lower investments by VC and angels. Scaling to market is also challenging with no sizable pediatric provider organizations, no HCA and over 250 standalone pediatric hospitals to individually pursue. Understanding and complying with the special ethical and regulatory protections for children constitutes another challenge. All these factors lead to the immense gap in children’s digital health funding.

This funding disparity points to the need for more dedicated digital health innovation in the pediatric space with increased support given to those start-ups trying to bring new solutions to market for kids. The Bear Institute, a strategic relationship between Children’s National Hospital and Cerner Corporation developed the Bear Institute PACK (Pediatric Accelerator Challenge for Kids), a start-up competition first held in 2021 that fosters pediatric digital health innovation.

We saw a need to do more for children who can’t advocate for themselves and created Bear Institute PACK as an event for the entire pediatric healthcare community. It focuses on bringing together entrepreneurs, pediatric healthcare providers and administrators, and investors from around the world to help close the immense gap in children’s digital health. Pediatric healthcare start-ups and college student teams can submit innovations in the following areas of development: Early-stage innovation, Concept Validation, Early Commercialization, and Growth Trajectory. Bear Institute PACK features three rounds of competition and judging, and this year’s in-person event is on September 15, 2022, at the Children’s National Research and Innovation Campus in Washington, D.C.

We actively recruit pediatric providers and administrators from hospitals and ambulatory centers to participate in the event as judges and help determine the event’s finalists. Bear Institute PACK is about making connections – it is our goal to have providers and administrators who know where there is a gap in their care process see a solution that might work in their environment and connect with that start-up. In addition to the start-ups’ chance to showcase their solutions to providers and administrators, there is a rich prize pool for the winner in each innovation development track, including prize monies, on-site pilots, and software development support.

We meet the winning start-ups where they are in terms of development and provide the best dedicated support possible to help them reach the next level. Last year’s patient education innovation track winner is currently conducting an on-site pilot at Children’s National with two other startups preparing for either pilots or a study. One of the rare disease track winners is also receiving software development support from our Bear Institute innovation team to help get them to a place where they have a technology integrated solution that can be piloted.

Bear Institute PACK is not a one day of the year event, it is an all-year push to help bring digital health solutions to market for kids. Start-up and pediatric provider and administrator registration is currently open, I encourage everyone in the pediatric healthcare community to participate and help get others involved as well because at the end of the day we are doing it for the kids.

About Brad Sitler

Brad Sitler leads the innovation team at Bear Institute for Health Innovation, a transformation partnership between Cerner Corporation and Children’s National Hospital and first-of-its kind pediatric health information technology (HIT) institute. At the heart of the Bear Institute is a development hub that focuses on innovation and developing the next and best health IT solution to improve the care of children. The Innovations team works on-site at Children’s National, immersed in the care process to learn more about both clinicians’ and patients’ needs to create the best possible solutions.

   

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