The UCSF Pediatric Surgery and Fetal Treatment Center, in collaboration with UCSF-Stanford Pediatric Device Consortium hosted the 4th Annual Michael R Harrison Innovation Symposium on Friday, October 7, 2022 at UCSF Mission Bay Conference Center. More than 200 participated in this symposium onsite and virtually!
The PDC/SI team with the grant winners!
Event Details
The symposium was kicked off with a warm welcome from Dr. Hanmin Lee (Professor and Chief of UCSF Pediatric Surgery) and by Opening Remarks from Dr. Daniel Lowenstein (Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor, UCSF). The morning session was focused on device innovation and featured the UCSF-Stanford PDC Pitch Competition in which 11 teams pitched their pediatric device innovations, to an esteemed panel of judges, to win one of the PDC awards (from a total pool of $300,000).
This was followed by a Pediatric Device Innovators Forum on ‘Unique Device Identifiers (UDI)’, which started off with a keynote about bolstering health equity for pediatric patients presented by Harvard’s Dr. Florence Bourgeois; followed by a panel discussion in which panelists from PDC, FDA and leading academic and healthcare institutions delved into perspectives from supply chain, value committees, and academic research. This panel later pivoted to a discussion about the challenges and opportunities for UDI Uptake and a very active Q&A session.
The afternoon session was kicked off with a spirited showcase of the UCSF Pediatric Surgery initiatives on global health, equity, disaster management and regenerative medicine, opening up the floor to questions from the audience. Furthermore, following a riveting keynote address by Stanford’s own Dr. Michael Longaker (Professor and Vice Chair of Surgery) on novel ways for scarless wound healing, two more discussion panels introduced experiences from UCSF’s biodevice innovation pathway program for surgical residents and advances made in ECMO and artificial placenta research, respectively. Finally, we wrapped up the day with an award ceremony for the Pitch winners by Dr. Michael Harrison and closing remarks.
Presentation from Dr. Michael Longaker of Stanford University
We would like to thank all symposium participants including pitch finalists, judges, keynote speakers, panelists, moderators, organizers and all attendees for making this a great learning experience. We hope to see you all back next year for the Symposium!
