GE Healthcare Partnering with Ohio Institutions

An Aurora, OH-based subsidiary of GE Healthcare is teaming with clinicians and researchers at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and Ohio State University to find better ways to take magnetic resonance images of children.

GEHC Coils Inc. will use a $1 million Ohio Third Frontier grant to work with the medical center and Ohio State’s Davis Heart and Lung Institute to design, build and validate MRI coils and surgical fixation devices for children.

The pediatric coils developed from the MRI Imaging and Devices for Pediatric Populations project would be used for taking MR images of children’s heads, hearts and other body parts, GE Healthcare said in a release. The Ohio-based collaboration also would develop new ways to keep children still during surgeries that use MRI technologies.

The project belongs to recent efforts to encourage the development of medical devices specifically for children. There is significant unmet need in several clinical areas for pediatric medical devices, according to the Food & Drug Administration. Yet potential markets for the devices often are too small for most companies to care about, so doctors end up adapting adult devices for children.