ORLANDO, Fl
Children’s Mercy Kansas City announced that it has been named a recipient of Microsoft Corp.’s 2017 Health Innovation Awards at the 2017 HIMSS Annual Conference and Exhibition in Orlando, Florida on Feb. 21.
The awards recognize health organizations that use innovative new technology to solve real world health problems. Children’s Mercy was recognized for its highly successful Cardiac High Acuity Monitoring Program (CHAMP) that aids in monitoring thousands of newborns with single-ventricle heart disease.
Shortly after the heart condition is detected the babies have an initial surgery and then will be at home for an “interstage” period before a second surgery, a period of time which requires a lot of health monitoring on the part of the parents and triage nurses. Nationally, around 1 in 5 babies with single-ventricle heart disease, such as Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome, will not survive the time period at home between the first surgery and second surgeries, according to the Children’s Mercy press release.
Now, parents’ can enter vital information about their [baby’s] health into the CHAMP app using a Microsoft surface 3 tablet, where it stores on a Microsoft cloud database. It transfers home monitoring data and videos in near real-time to the CHAMP home monitoring care team and its computer algorithms can detect abnormalities.
“We’re extremely honored to have Microsoft and HIMSS celebrate CHAMP’s early success… and this Health Innovation Award reinforces our goal to build a system that will evolve and become more intelligent over time,” said Dr. Girish Shirali, co-director of the Ward Family Heart Center at Children’s Mercy.
Children’s Mercy started using the CHAMP app in March 2014, and since that time in none of its 62 single-ventricle patients have died during the interstage period.
“With more sophisticated analytics, we hope to find ways to help us treat babies quicker and even avoid hospitalization altogether,’ Dr. Girish Shirali said.
Today, 55 U.S. sites and eight international sites that perform single- ventricle heart surgery on infants have expressed interest in using CHAMP.