NEOsphere 2025: Accelerating Action through Collaborative Innovation
Save the date! More details to come soon!
Parking: Via Ortega Garage
498 Via Ortega,
Stanford, CA 94305
Parking Map
Context
The world is undergoing radical technological change. This will profoundly impact the science, technology and care provided to vulnerable babies during their NICU hospitalization and after discharge home. We have an opportunity to radically reimagine the way we provide care in the NICU and at home to improve infant outcomes across the life course. The California Perinatal Quality Care Collaborative (CPQCC) with its statewide network of NICUs and High Risk Infant Follow Up (HRIF) Program can serve as the catalyst for innovation.
Summary
A one-day conference hosted by the CPQCC at Stanford, providing practitioners, technologists, and policymakers with a unique chance to envision the future of NICU and early childhood care, emphasizing the foundation of a healthy life from birth to early childhood. As we build on the momentum of NEOsphere 2024, the upcoming conference will shift from ideation to implementation. The 2025 theme will focus on turning bold ideas into measurable impact across neonatal care in California. With six innovation pillars identified—Families, Policies, Workforce, Hardware, Software, and Setting—the next phase demands structured collaboration and cross-sector partnerships.
Impact
NEOsphere conference aspires to provoke a reexamination of care practices, serves an incubator for ideas, and a platform for innovation. We aim to harness the wisdom of NICU families to develop collaboration between technologists, practitioners, and families to support the development and testing of novel approaches that enhance NICU care and early childhood health outcomes and equity. NEOsphere holds the potential to transform the NICU and early childhood care landscape.
Key Goals
- Launch the California Neonatal Innovation Lab (CNIL): A quarterly collaborative forum where NICU innovators, clinicians, engineers, families, and policymakers co-design and test solutions.
- Pilot Cross-Institutional Innovation Hubs: Enable NICUs to test and share new technologies and care models in real-world settings.
- Develop Common Innovation Protocols: Create evaluation frameworks for onboarding, testing, and scaling new hardware, software, and workflows.
- Prioritize Equity and Mental Health: Embed equity-driven design and mental health support into every innovation pathway.
- Build the Neonatal Tech Pipeline: Partner with universities, design schools, and tech startups to accelerate the development of user-centered neonatal solutions.
- Engage the Advocacy Ecosystem: Elevate family voices and strengthen campaigns for paid leave, better communication tools, and remote care access.
Calls to Action
- Showcase early pilots and lessons learned from 2024 concepts.
- Facilitate multi-stakeholder workshops focused on real-world barriers to innovation.
- Identify policy levers and funding pathways to support bold change.
- Commit to a shared roadmap with measurable milestones for NICU innovation in California.
