We are a team of professional engineers and clinicians uniquely positioned within the world-renowned Boston Children’s Benderson Family Heart Center. Our “zero distance” model of working alongside our medical colleagues allows our team to focus engineering resources on clinically relevant problems. We elicit feedback from healthcare providers at every stage of the development and problem-solving process to ensure that our solutions are relevant. Any solution we offer must incorporate context sensitivity to accommodate the unique environment of a hospital or operating room. With "zero distance", we support cardiac care providers and surgeons in developing and delivering the highest caliber of care to patients and their families.
Patient-specific models for analysis, decision-making, and education
Precise planning of interventions to improve surgical outcomes
Supercomputer simulation to better understand surgical outcomes before the OR
Clinically-focused device design and model validation
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The lab began as a collaboration between an engineering-trained pediatric cardiac surgeon and a PhD engineer who wanted to tackle a vexing clinical problem using simulation tools from engineering.
After seeing how useful 3D models are for exploring a patient’s anatomy prior to heart surgery, our cardiologists and surgeons started requesting the models to help with the planning process of many surgeries, particularly complex procedures.
We reached the 100 clinical model milestone in September of 2020, and with requests increasing, we realized that we'd need to grow to support the clinical demand along with our research work.
To meet a growing clinical need, we expanded our team and our virtual surgery and simulation offerings. As of 2024, we can model more than 50 percent of Boston Children’s cardiac surgical cases.
We're building an international network of pediatric heart centers to make sure these engineering approaches are available for the patients who need it, wherever they are.