2024 Pediatric Device Accelerator Pitch Competition

HOSTED BY UCSF AT THE ANNUAL MICHAEL R. HARRISON INNOVATION SYMPOSIUM 

Event Recordings

UCSF-Stanford Pediatric Device Accelerator Competition Details

$250,000 IN TOTAL FUNDING AVAILABLE FOR DEVICE PROJECTS!

Timeline

  • Application opens: December 15, 2023

  • Application deadline: January 29, 2024 5:00 PM PST

  • Finalists announced: February 22, 2024

  • Pitch competition: March 22, 2024

About

Thanks to funding from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration through the Pediatric Device Consortia Grants Program, and generous support in matching funds from the Frederick Gardner Cottrell Foundation, and The Hooper Family, a total of $250,000 in seed grants will be awarded.

Awards

Eligibility

  • Up to $100,000 per project

  • Advising, prototyping support, and commercialization coaching by the UCSF-Stanford PDC and industry partners

  • A few selected participants will have the opportunity to work closely with our PDC partner and the world-class medical device incubator, Fogarty Innovation, to advance their pediatric innovations further.

  • Innovator with a promising pediatric device idea that meets the FDA definition of a medical device interested in working with the UCSF-Stanford PDC and its advisors to develop the idea into a marketable product.

  • Based in the United States.

  • Available to present at the pitch competition on March 22, 2024.

 

PDC Pitch Judges 2024

Nada Hanafi

Nada O. Hanafi, MSc, MPH

Nada Hanafi is a thought leader within the Life Sciences and MedTech industry with over 22 years of experience across the public and private sectors. She is the Founder of MedTech Strategy Advisors, LLC where she advises life-science companies on regulatory strategy, product development, and clinical research to accomplish regulatory, compliance, and business goals. Nada spent over 12 years working for the FDA, serving in increasing roles of responsibility and ultimately as a Senior Science Health Advisor in the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), where she led cross-Center and Agency programs for the advancement of FDA's mission to promote and protect public health, including as co-founder of the Health of Women (HoW) program, the Network of Experts program and the Patient Preference Initiative. She served as CDRH Liaison and Subject Matter Expert to FDA’s Office of Women’s Health (OWH) and the Office of Minority Health (OMH). She collaborated with the Center for Tobacco (CTP) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) where she served as Senior Management Advisor to the Director at the Office of Research on Women’s Health (ORWH), to improve regulatory efficiency and to strengthen data collection. Nada’s drive and passion to address health inequities with a focus on women and minorities led her to co-found MedTech Color, a non-profit focused on advancing the representation of people of color within MedTech. Nada also serves on the Steering Committee and as co-lead on the Regulatory and Science Policy subcommittee for the Innovation Equity Forum (IEF) led by the NIH’s ORWH and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Nada holds an MSc in Biomaterials and a BEng in Biomedical Materials Science & Engineering from Queen Mary College, University of London. She earned her MPH from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Nada is a Certified Quality Improvement Associate (CQIA) and a Certified Quality Auditor (CQA) from the American Society for Quality (ASQ). 

Avi Roop

Avi Roop conducts the technical and business analysis of medical device investment opportunities as Managing Director of Research Corporation Technologies. He has more than twenty years experience in surgical and interventional device markets and possesses extensive experience in early-stage development from unmet need identification to early commercialization. During his career, he has been named on twenty-nine issued patent families and completed three company exits. 

Paul A. Hooper

A seasoned professional with experience leading Information Technology teams, Marketing functions, and both private and public organizations. A tenured Chief Executive with experience in funding rounds, public offerings, and private equity transactions. Advisor to early/mid-stage technology and services start-ups from initial seed-rounds through to IPO and acquisition. 

Passionate about applying technology to solve business challenges while creating value for both consumer and provider. Fortunate enough to have spent the better part of thirty years chasing that passion while building world-class teams and cultures at leading organizations around the world. The proud father of two college graduate daughters and as a result, keen to ensure equity and diversity in the workplace. 

Wendy Sue Swanson, MD, MBE, FAAP

Dr. Wendy Sue Swanson is a pediatrician physician executive, digital health expert, and bioethicist. An Adjunct Professor at Stanford University and public health communicator, she is an experienced executive and national public health spokesperson. She has worked in the hospital, community pediatrics, with start-ups, for media, and on behalf of numerous Dept. of Health and US national academies. She is focused on disrupting health communication to increase community understanding via democratizing health advice, health information, and transforming the practice of medicine. 

As a pediatrician, author, and a prominent advocate of evidence-based medicine and prevention, Swanson speaks internationally on communication technology, digital health, and health innovation. She has been a leading voice in health care, working to revolutionize health communications by using social and digital media, as well as mass media, to bridge the gap between parents and doctors. For 10 years Dr. Swanson wrote the first US hospital blog, Seattle Mama Doc for Seattle Children’s Hospital and founded the Digital Health department in 2013. Swanson was later named Chief of Digital Innovation. For 6 years she led a team in innovation inside the hospital testing and creating new digital tools. 

She was a pioneer in using social media in medicine with a focus on increasing trust in the science and safety of immunizations. For more than a decade, she generated worldwide interest in pediatric public health topics, her team's digital health innovation projects, and prevention solutions by leveraging her blog, social channels, and media opportunities. 

Career Focus: building solutions in prevention across the world leveraging skills in medical practice, health translation, digital health, thought leadership, bioethics, and innovation. 

Vivian De Ruijter, MD

Dr. Vivian Emmely de Ruijter is a venture capitalist and Stanford University trained physician in healthcare technology innovation. As an investor at Intuitive Ventures she invests in products and services that advance the future of minimally invasive care with an emphasis on digital products/services, focal therapeutics, medical devices and precision diagnostics. She is a board observer at Endogenex, Medcrypt, KelaHealth and Flywheel. 
 
Before joining Intuitive Ventures, Vivian served as a senior manager in Manatt, Phelps & Phillips' digital and technology consulting practice. At Manatt, she worked with healthcare technology and medtech companies to create clinical, regulatory, business and marketing strategies. Prior to Manatt, she was the assistant program director of the UCSF-Stanford Pediatric Device Consortium, where she co-managed the pediatric health technology incubator at Stanford Children's Health. 
 
She holds a postdoctoral designation in biodesign from the Stanford Byers Center for Biodesign, a credential in Pediatric Healthcare Technology Innovation from Stanford's Division of Pediatric Surgery, a credential in Surgical Education and Innovation from Stanford's General Surgery department and a credential in Minimally Invasive Surgery at the IRCAD, a world-renowned minimally invasive surgery center in France. She is an instructor at Stanford University, educating students in the fundamentals of biodesign. 

Denise Zarins

Always committed to seeking innovative solutions and creating meaningful and effective programs, makes Denise an invaluable team player on the Fogarty Innovation team. Her 25 years of experience in the medical device industry include devising and developing products in multiple spaces, including cardiovascular, obesity, pulmonary and women’s health. She is proud of the 100-plus patents in her portfolio accumulated in these many clinical disciplines. 

While she had always known she wanted to be involved in medicine, she also knew she didn’t want to become a doctor. Thanks to her mom who gave her a flier on a biomedical engineering open house at Marquette University, she found an immediate fit that dovetailed with her love of math and science. Medtech has proven to be a satisfying career path where she can help countless patients rather than just one at a time. 

Denise began her career as a research and development engineer and manager at AneuRx, a startup that was founded by Dr. Fogarty and later acquired by Medtronic; then she subsequently joined another Fogarty-backed startup, Bacchus Vascular, which was later acquired by Covidien. With roots in engineering, Denise found her stride in project management and intellectual property development. 

One of the most rewarding aspects of her career has been involvement with startups whose products have gone to market and are still being used to help patients today. That was the case with her time at The Foundry, where she co-founded Ardian, Inc., the pioneer of renal denervation for hypertension, heart failure and other associated disorders, which was acquired by Medtronic in 2011. 

Denise then co-founded Ziva Medical (now May Health), an early-stage medical device company treating infertility caused by polycystic ovary syndrome. While launching this company, she also consulted in project management, due diligence, and intellectual property development. 

Her work at Fogarty Innovation allows her to be involved in multiple projects simultaneously, while also helping young entrepreneurs avoid missteps as they launch their companies. She finds it a place she can live her values every day, as integrity and the concept of “team before self” drive everything she does. Denise has received several awards and is a frequent guest lecturer at Stanford University. 

Raised in a small town in suburban Milwaukee, Denise grew up watching NFL football, a favorite pastime to this day as she regularly cheers on the Packers and the Patriots. She is a lover of all animals and in some circles is known as “The Zookeeper,” referencing her eclectic home menagerie of pets. Equally important to Denise is her passion for music, especially sappy love songs. You can often find her in the first few rows of the local live concert venue, cold beer in hand, one of her favorite ways to relax before diving into her next project. 

Verna Rodriguez

Verna Manty Rodriguez is the Executive Director of the Master in Translational Medicine, at UC Berkeley and UCSF. She also teaches Project Management and Design Control for medical devices at UC Berkeley. She received her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science from U.C. Berkeley. Before joining UC Berkeley, Verna spent 4 years teaching bioengineering courses at Santa Clara University and advising start-up entrepreneurs on device development and design control via her company Manty Medtech. Prior to that, she led engineering design and manufacturing teams for the development of pulmonary and cardiovascular devices including implants, grafts, Rx and Dx catheters, and delivery systems at various companies such as Edwards Life Science, Abbott Vascular and Boston Scientific. She holds three US patents. 

Emma Moran

Emma is the strategic lead at CobiCure, a pediatric healthcare non-profit focused on advancing the development of pediatric medical devices.  CobiCure partners with key medical technology innovators and leaders across the field to advance device solutions for children, particularly those with congenital diseases.  Emma is a biomedical engineer with experience in the medical device industry, including research, strategy development, and corporate development. 

 

Agenda

5th Annual Michael R. Harrison Innovation Symposium

8:30 am - Welcome & Introduction: Hanmin Lee, MD, PI, UCSF-Stanford PDC

8:45 am - PDC Pediatric Accelerator Pitch Competition

10:45 am - Break

11:00 am - Keynote Speaker - Sam Hawgood, Chancellor of University of California, San Francisco 

11:15 am - Panel Discussion - Real World Evidence 

12:30 pm - Lunch Break

1:30 pm - Panel Discussion - Artificial Organs 

2:30 pm - Trailblazer Speech - Timothy Chou: Pediatric Moonshot

3:00 pm - Break

3:15 pm - Surgical Innovations Projects - Where are they now? 

4:15 pm - PDC Accelerator Award Announcement & Closing Remarks

The UCSF-Stanford Pediatric Device Consortium is funded by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration's Office of Orphan Products Development under grant no. P50FD007967.