Five finalists picked to give 5 minute Ignite Talks at Taking on Tomorrow

Five researchers, clinicians and inventors have been selected to present at Boston Children’s Hospital’s Ignite Talks Competition, to be held Tuesday, November 10, 2:45-3:45 p.m. at the close of the 2015 Global Pediatric Innovation Summit + Awards, Taking on Tomorrow (#PedInno15).

The five-minute Ignite Talks, new this year, offer presenters a chance to pitch a novel and innovative solution, idea or approach to a significant health care or medical problem before an audience of pediatric innovation leaders. The competition is being presented by Deloitte and will be hosted by Chris Duffy, Host of WBUR’s You’re the Expert.

The Ignite Talks competitors and their topics will be:

• Sara Jandeska, MD, a pediatrician at Rush Children’s Hospital in Chicago, on a portable, affordable solution for delivering dialysis to children in developing countries.

• Raj Shekhar, PhD, a researcher with Children’s National Health System, Washington, DC, on a mobile device that distinguishes benign heart murmurs from those needing specialized care.

• Doug Vincent, President and CEO, Design Mentor, Inc., Pelham, NH, on a device to improve outcomes in children receiving cardiopulmonary support.

• Brian McAlvin, MD, an intensivist in Critical Care at Boston Children’s Hospital, on a technology for treating septic shock that curbs the inflammatory response.

• David Roberson, a PhD candidate at the Woolf Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital, on an automated, image-based technology for assessing pain and neurological function in rodent models.

Presenters will have five minutes to give their pitch and are allowed no more than 20 slides—set to auto-advance every 15 seconds. The audience will then choose a winner through a mobile voting app. The winner will receive an Apple watch, an hour-long one-on-one mentoring session with an influential venture capitalist (VC) and an exclusive meet-and-greet with Boston Children’s Innovation Acceleration team, VCs and other stakeholders.

In contrast to the Innovation Tank, which focuses on products and market-ready ideas seeking cash awards (read more), the Ignite Talks are for ideas in an earlier stage of development that are seeking collaborators and mentors.

Boston Children’s Hospital’s Global Pediatric Innovation Summit + Awards 2015, Taking on Tomorrow (November 9-10, 2015), is designed to address unmet needs, solve problems and seize opportunities in pediatric health care. The 2015 theme is Precision Pediatrics.

Taking on Tomorrow features IBM as its premier sponsor. Additional sponsors, to date, include Philips, Deloitte, Bain Capital Ventures, Genzyme, Zaffre Investments, Medtronic, American Well, Cerner Corporation, Siemens, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, athenahealth, Claritas Genomics, FKP Architects, Grunenthal and Shire. Association partners include the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Institute for Pediatric Innovation, Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, the Mass Technology Leadership Council (MassTLC), the Network for Excellence in Health Innovation, the New England Venture Capital Association and Springboard Enterprises. Media partners include boston.com, The Boston Globe, Modern Healthcare, Hospital of Tomorrow, WGBH, WBUR-90.9 FM, Xconomy and MIT Technology Review.

Read about last year’s inaugural Innovation Tank and follow the Summit online @BCH_Innovation #PedInno15 takingontomorrow.org.

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