OVERVIEW  The COVID-19 pandemic revealed a critical shortage in frontline medical supplies. Non-medical scientists and engineers, hoping to support the effort, came forward offering designs and abilities to fill these gaps, but their expertise, discoveries and resources could not be deployed efficiently. The two communities ? non-medical science and engineering and healthcare - are disparate, not connected worlds. Filling the urgent shortfalls in frontline healthcare supplies during a pandemic reflects both need and speed and requires rapid identification, design, scale, and deployment. The additive manufacturing (3D printing) community has grown not only in size but also in expertise (including faculty researchers, industry research and local hobbyists). The community is ideally suited to support crises; it embraces open-source solutions (eliminating the profit motive) and crowd-sourcing (allowing for rapid scaling of production) However, most in the additive manufacturing community are neither connected with nor well-versed in the rigorous requirements of healthcare.  

The pandemic provided a test case and early evidence in Philadelphia that the 3D additive community network can rapidly fill frontline shortages of simple equipment. Within two days of an identified shortage of face shields at Children?s Hospital of Philadelphia, engineering files were created, materials sourced, prototypes were tested; and twelve shields were provided and used by radiology technicians. However, this effort also revealed challenges in realizing the potential of this crisis workforce; most importantly, the ability to scale. The lack of clear workflows for defining, prioritizing, and growing these efforts required a cumbersome management process. Currently, the process relies on verbal and email communication which can challenge defining specifications and validation/testing requirements essential for safe deployment. Such informal methods and workflows can lead to longer or duplicative efforts and poor designs. Further, as COVID needs are revealed in real-time, shifting project demands requires a growing body of experts as well as volunteers to assemble the devices. Therefore, a streamlined process (from intake to delivery) and robust matchmaking are needed for efficiency and effectiveness. If data were collected, learning in real-time could enable an embedded quality improvement process and result in more robust workflows that can be shared. 

Children?s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) anticipated the need for efficient, effective innovation to meet the needs of children, particularly those with rare conditions, who require specialized devices but do not represent a market of sufficient size for product development investment. To this end, this RAPID funded and support from CHOP supported the following activities, (1) efficient product development pathways - focusing on the intake process; (2) free on-line training resource for non-medical scientists and engineers - Academic Entrepreneurship for Medical and Health Scientists - https://academicentrepreneurship.pubpub.gov ; (3) conducted point-of-care product testing before releasing to patients; and (4) completed and demonstrated value of expertise finding and mentor-mentee matchmaking with the new Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence-driven, Expertise Knowledge Platform (EKP). 

  This RAPID proposal had ab immediate benefit in the Philadelphia area in addressing needs related to COVID and the work conducted served as a robust, real-world test case to form an Innovation Ecosystem, led by PI, Flaura Koplin Winston, MD PhD, to support a connected, efficient response for future disaster and emergency shortages for pediatrics.Key team members included: Fuchiang Tsui, PhD, who brought 25+ years? experience in artificial intelligence and machine learning in healthcare settings; Asif Chinwalla, MBA, who broughts 25+ years? experience in implementing scalable high throughput computational informatics; Raymond Sze, MD, the Associate Chief Radiologist who led the Children?s Hospital Additive Manufacturing for Pediatrics (CHAMP) 3D lab, which served as the engineering coordinating center; Daria Ferro, MD, a clinician informatician and quality improvement expert; and ECRI.org, with 50+ years? experience in conducting independent medical device evaluations. 

INTELLECTUAL MERIT  Problem addressed by this application: Despite the urgent need for technical solutions to supply chain shortages, local technical talent, passion and resources were under-utilized and/or not applied systematically in the event of COVID19.  Achievement: We applied state-of-the-art quality improvement techniques, adapted for the rapidly changing pandemic context a new, improved processes for intake of point-of-care manufacturing needs for an additive manufacturing (3D printing) laboratory that fulfilled supply chain shortages during the pandemic. (Aim 1) We built and validated the backend of the Expertise Knowledge Platform by applying artificial intelligence for matchmaking (between expertise needs with experts who possess the needed knowledge and skills) and shared the results through a pending conference paper.

BROADER IMPACTS:  This woman-led effort led to new personal protective equipment that could be manufactured at hospital point-of-care during emergencies and pandemics. A novel origami clear surgical mask allowed for safe examination of deaf children and those who had development or behavioral challenges. We scaled an open resource repository of critical knowledge for medical and health science innovation/commercialization through the creationg of the Academic Entrepreneurship on-line book and community resource - https://academicentrepreneurship.pubpub.org .