Industry has made significant advances in technologies that impact healthcare delivery, but for the most part these advances have targeted adult populations. Children are frequently not included in clinical studies for several reasons: legal concerns as well as for practical reasons related to their changing physiology; the need for the technology to accommodate changes due to growth and development; and the fact that the market segment is not considered to be big enough to justify the expenses involved.

Scientists and engineers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and clinicians and scientists at Children’s Scottish Rite and Emory campuses propose to address this specific goal by focusing on the engineering challenges arising from the translation of basic research to clinical practice. This is a critical area of research, with the goal of developing new techniques, technologies and therapeutics to diagnose, treat and cure diseases and conditions that affect children.

Many technologies invented in academic laboratories cannot be readily transferred to commercialization due to engineering problems in design and scale up. This Center is the only one of its kind in the US, where engineers take an active leadership role in academic programs addressing this research gap. 

The Center for Pediatric Healthcare Technology Innovation follows the model established over the past three years by the Georgia Tech/Children’s Laboratory for Craniofacial Plastic Surgery Research. The Laboratory has combined the expertise of scientists and engineers at Georgia Tech with surgeons at Scottish Rite to define critical problems in treating craniofacial anomalies in children, to develop basic knowledge needed to address these problems, and to design and develop novel diagnostic and therapeutic regimens based on this information.