SWPDC - Southwest National Pediatric Device Innovation Consortium

The Southwest national Pediatric Device innovation Consortium (SWPDC) is a “free no-strings-attached” virtual accelerator based at Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine that supports pediatric device innovators nationwide throughout the pediatric device life cycle. SWPDC is one of five U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) P50 grant-supported pediatric device consortia and is led by Dr. Chester Koh, Executive Director and Contact Principal Investigator. Other PDCs are located in Pennsylvania, Washington D.C., San Francisco Bay Area, and Los Angeles. We support pediatric device innovators both regionally and nationally with product and technology acceleration services and business acceleration services in a “no-strings-attached” manner, with the goals of commercialization and clinical use of novel pediatric medical devices. The consortium includes clinical, scientific, business, financial, regulatory, reimbursement, engineering, ISO13485 compliant product design & manufacturing, intellectual property, and academic partners in the Houston / Southwest U.S. region, including Texas A&M University, Rice University, University of Houston, Fannin Innovation Studio, local device development firms, and other children’s hospitals in the Southwest U.S. region (including Children's Hospital of San Antonio, Children's Health in Dallas, and Phoenix Children's). The consortium recognizes that pediatric device projects may need an extended life cycle in the children’s hospital / academic setting before exposure to the external market. To this end, it has partnered with faculty, students, and resources of major children's hospitals and established engineering teams at major research universities to identify unmet pediatric device needs, and then design and test new pediatric device prototypes that can be developed into viable pediatric medical devices.