Philips and Nicklaus Children's Health System have joined forces to enhance pediatric care for the health system’s more than 500,000 annual patients. As part of the 10-year collaboration, they will adopt the Ingenia Ambition X MR and EPIQ CVx ultrasound as well as a number of patient experience technologies.

“As the premier pediatric hospital in South Florida, we seek collaborators for important initiatives that align with our mission, vision, and culture, as well as our strategic focus for generations to come,” senior vice president and chief operating officer of Nicklaus Children's Health System and president, Nicklaus Children's Hospital, told HCB News. “We selected Philips for this initiative as it shares our commitment to innovation and advancing the overall experience for our patients.”

Both Nicklaus and Philips understand the importance of designing MR technologies specifically for children. The patient experience technologies that the health system plans to adopt include a toy MR called the Kitten Scanner, the Philips Scan Buddy app, which features educational videos and games, and the Philips Ambient Experience.
"Kids are not just small adults — they have very different needs," Sanne Nauts, senior scientist at Philips, told HCB News. "It can be very difficult and very challenging for a young child to have an MR scan. They need to get into this large machine, lie still for an extended period of time, and the scanner makes a lot of very jarring, loud noises."

The goal is to get the children familiar with how the technology works and what to expect during the exam. The idea is that if they’re able to remain calm, then there will be no need for sedation.

"A lot of hospitals use anesthesia or sedation to scan young children," Nauts explained. "That's suboptimal for kids because if they have a lot of these cases and they're exposed to anesthetic agents, there's always a small risk of side effects."

In fact, the FDA issued a safety announcement in 2016 warning that “repeated or lengthy use of general anesthetic and sedation drugs during surgeries or procedures in children younger than three years may affect the development of their brains.”

University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany conducted a study on the prototype version of the Philips Scan Buddy app and found that it successfully allowed them to scan children without the need for general anesthesia or sedation. Now they are involved in a study looking at the full version of the app, which is the one that Nicklaus is adopting.

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