Visiting Children's National Hospital

Back in May, I was given the chance to visit the new failities of the Children's National Hospital in D.C.

"The creation of the Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation was made possible by a $150 million gift from the government of of Abu Dhabi, representing a shared vision to significantly and measurably advance medical innovation to create healthier and safer surgical outcomes for children worldwide." Our long friend and partner, Kevin Cleary is now the Technical Director and Lead Principal Investigator, joining one and a half years ago. "He leads the Institute’s interdisciplinary bioengineering team with a focus on improving visualization in pediatric surgery through medical devices and robotics. As part of that work, he will modify devices designed for adult surgery to work better in the smaller bodies of children." Kevin Cleary has long been leading the IGSTK development group, and directed various research projects in intraoperative navigation.

Currently, the group is working on NOTES robotics, force-based tissue interaction (with a KUKA LWR and a MIMIC haptic interface), sensorized phantoms (for pediatric operations) and having a da Vinci for further projects.

They also run a surgical innovation blog.