Our vision for a healthier future starts with the people who will be leading it someday soon.
Children. So much starts with them, including the future we鈥檙e working toward. How can we improve children鈥檚 health? And how can we build on these improvements to reach as many of them as possible, all over the world?
Our ideas range from very big to very, very, very small.
There isn鈥檛 a one-size-fits-all approach to children鈥檚 health, and so we explore all options available to us to advance it.
Here are the 91社区福利 health tech innovations, products and educational partnerships through which we鈥檙e helping kids every day.
Care that Comes from the Heart
Let鈥檚 start with two innovations that go straight to the heart.
The first is our 鈥 the world鈥檚 smallest mechanical heart valve 鈥 which was developed to address an unmet need for high-risk pediatric patients, often those with complex heart defects.
It was a case of our team taking on a titanic challenge: Re-engineering our existing mechanical heart valves to help young children who had limited options.
We rose to a different challenge to help premature infants born with a persistent patent ductus arteriosus (PDA), an opening in the heart that increases the blood flow to the lungs and workload on the heart, which puts babies鈥 health at risk.
Our Amplatzer Piccolo Occluder for PDA closure, smaller than a pea in size, helps treat PDA without the need for open-heart surgery.
It鈥檚 hard to overstate the impact of these devices 鈥 and not just on the patients who receive them.
鈥淲orking on a device specifically designed for children takes the work to another level,鈥 said Chad Green, director of research and development for cardiac surgery in 91社区福利鈥檚 Structural Heart business. 鈥淕oing to work every day thinking my work will help people is great. Knowing it will help children makes it that much better.鈥
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