Seed funding awarded to pediatric device innovators
David Camarillo, PhD, assistant professor of bioengineering, received a development award for a mouthguard that measures head impacts during sports games and practices.
Photo by DNK Digital
On April 8, Stanford Children’s Health announced the winners of the pediatric medical device development competition, hosted by the UCSF-Stanford Pediatric Device Consortium (PDC). In a timed, Shark Tank–style presentation, 13 finalists from a total of 74 applicants pitched their pediatric device ideas to a panel of judges.
Among the top winners were two devices that originated at Stanford: palmm, a bioelectronic device that stops excessive sweating, and MiG2.0, an instrumented mouthguard that assesses mild traumatic brain injury in youth contact sports. The palmm team, led by Véronique Peiffer, an alumna of the Biodesign Innovation Fellowship and the recipient of a Spectrum MedTech pilot grant, received $50,000 in direct device funding through the UCSF-Stanford Pediatric Device Consortium. The MiG2.0 team, led by David Camarillo, PhD, assistant professor of bioengineering, received $50,000 from the Stanford Maternal and Child Health Research Institute.
The UCSF-Stanford Pediatric Device Consortium aims to accelerate the movement of high-value, high-impact pediatric device solutions into clinical care, since far fewer medical devices are approved by the Food and Drug Administration for children than adults. For more about the consortium’s funding, advising and education resources, see their website.