The Power of Learning Networks: The Story of Pediatric Acute Care Cardiology Collaborative (PAC3)
September 14th, 2021
Although congenital heart disease is the most common birth defect, there is heterogeneity of cardiac lesions making any specific type a rare disease. Aggregating clinical data from many pediatric heart centers into registries, and merging registry data across the field of CHD, holds the promise of producing sufficiently large data sets to accelerate knowledge discovery. Coupling this data with a pediatric learning health system, purposefully designed to execute quality improvement across these multiple centers and to implement evidence at the point of care, can exponentially accelerate the capacity to act on this new knowledge. In this talk we will describe the development of PAC3 , the Pediatric Acute Care Cardiology Collaborative, which we founded in 2015, its place alongside other pediatric cardiology registries (Cardiac Networks United), and the power of Learning Networks in general to hasten the translation of discovery to improvements in care and outcomes.
Alaina Kipps
Alaina Kipps, MD, MS grew up in Santa Cruz, California, and completed her medical degree at Harvard Medical School in 2003. After a general pediatrics residency at Stanford, she completed a pediatric cardiology fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital and then returned west to practice at the University of California, San Francisco until 2012. She was recruited back to Stanford in 2012 to become the medical director for acute care cardiology. In 2014 she co-founded the PAC³ network with Nicolas Madsen and co-directs this today. Her academic focus is on clinical effectiveness and quality improvement science, and she recently completed the SMCI Advanced course in improvement science. Her other significant interest is in teaching; she co-directs the pediatric residency cardiology rotation at Stanford.
Nicolas L. Madsen
Nicolas L. Madsen, MD, MPH joined the Heart Institute at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital in July 2012. He attended the University of California at Davis, where he graduated with honors. He earned his medical degree with honors at the University of Washington in 2005. Dr. Madsen completed his residency in general pediatrics and his fellowship in pediatric cardiology at Seattle Children’s Hospital in Seattle, Washington. In addition, Dr. Madsen earned a Master of Public Health from the University of Washington in 2011. Dr. Madsen’s clinical focus is on acute care cardiology and long-term outcomes for children born with congenital heart disease. These interests motivated Dr. Madsen to co-develop PAC³ in 2014. He hopes that PAC³ will aid in the care of children hospitalized with cardiac conditions regarding reducing complications, shortening hospital length of stay, decreasing the frequency of readmissions, and improving the patient and family experience.
