The FDA this month finalized a rule requiring more pediatric patient information from medical devices going through the premarket approval pathway, even if the products are intended for adults.
Pediatrics
Simple test could save 2,000 newborns per year, so why don’t more hospitals do it?
Thousands of newborn babies die or suffer serious illness each year for want of a cheap, readily available medical device to test for congenital heart disease, according to neonatal health experts.
Congress passes the National Pediatric Research Network Act
By Tom Ulrich
Vector is taking some time off for the holidays, but we wanted to leave you with some good news. After nearly 10 years of lobbying and debate, Congress finally passed the National Pediatric Research Network Act (NPRNA). President Barack Obama signed the act into law on Nov. 27.
FDA gets serious about improving medical device innovation for kids
Improved ‘handoff’ communication curbs medical errors
The comfy ball: A ‘hack’ to help children express their pain
Israel Green-Hopkins, MD, is a second-year fellow in Pediatric Emergency Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital and a fierce advocate for innovation in health information technology, with a passion for design, mobile health, remote monitoring and more. Follow him on Twitter @israel_md.
Pediatricians as policy advocates: Take one bill and call me in the morning
By Scott Howe
Bringing MRI to vulnerable newborns
Babies born extremely premature are surviving. How do they do in the long run?
By Tom Ulrich
Twenty or thirty years ago, no one would have expected babies born extremely prematurely – between 23 and 25 weeks’ gestation, considered the edge of viability – to survive long enough for their performance as elementary schoolers to be an issue.
But times change. Treatments like surfactants and prenatal steroids, along with improvements in ventilators and nutrition, have often enabled extremely premature children to survive.
Are pediatric patients being discharged before they’re ready?
By Scott Howe
Because unplanned hospital readmissions put patients at risk, burden families and add to the cost of health care, many medical professionals are taking steps to reduce them. To push the effort, new Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) rules impose escalating penalties that decrease a hospital’s Medicare payments if patients are readmitted within 30 days of discharge.