OHIO — Some of Ohio's biggest hospitals announced on Friday the launch of the Midwest Pediatric Device Consortium (MPDC) to accelerate the innovation in pediatrics and utilizes the resources of the Midwest to advance pediatric device development across the country.
The MPDC is led by Nationwide Children's Hospital, The Ohio State University, Cincinnati Children's and Cleveland Clinic Children's with a collaboration with many Midwest academics and industry innovators including Northeast Ohio Medical University, University of Toledo, Ohio Life Science, Rev1 Ventures, Jumpstart, CincyTech and more, according to a press release from Nationwide Children's Hospital.
The MPDC is a federally funded program that brings together key leaders in life sciences to impact change and propel advancements in pediatrics.
"Very few medical devices are designed and marketed for children," Dr. Cory Criss, co-principal investigator and chief operating officer of the consortium and pediatric surgeon at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, said in the press release. "The Midwest’s impressive and expansive MedTech infrastructure makes it an ideal location to support innovative projects designed for pediatrics. We see this grant as not only as an opportunity for impact in pediatrics, but also a catalyst for developing a pipeline of collaborative effort in the region. We are excited to get to work."
The consortium is the result of an initiative from the Food and Drug Administration that focuses on increasing pediatric device development, according to the press release. This initiative provides specific funding for devices and resources for inventors to advance their projects forward. As part of this legislation, the FDA awarded a $6.95 million grant to the collaboration to establish the MPDC and to provide funding, resources, networking, clinical trials infrastructure, collaboration with other PDCs and a commitment to under-represented populations on Sept. 11, 2023. This allows the region to not only advance pediatric devices here in the Midwest, but also to aid in devices across the country, according to the release.
The launch of the MPDC showcases the growing revolution of life science research programs in the Midwest and the MPDC called for applications in January 2024 for their Direct Device Funding grant. The grant recipients will be announced in March 2024.
You can learn more about the consortium here.