Experts from academia, clinical care, industry, and government gathered in the greater Washington, D.C., area to explore how artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are rapidly reshaping pediatric health, from early-stage scientific discovery to real-world clinical care.
Hosted by Children’s National Hospital and Virginia Tech, the third annual AI for Pediatric Health Symposium highlighted the growing momentum behind the Pediatric Health AI Innovation Hub, a collaborative initiative designed to bring together researchers, computational data scientists, and clinicians to accelerate AI-driven innovation.
Held at Virginia Tech’s academic building in Alexandria, the symposium showcased how Children’s National and Virginia Tech are helping lead the national conversation around the future of pediatric AI and the importance of developing technologies designed specifically for children, not simply adapted from adult medicine. Despite representing more than a quarter of the population, children are the focus of only 2.4 percent of AI research.
“Children’s health presents some of the most important and complex opportunities for artificial intelligence,” said Catherine Bollard, chief research officer at Children’s National. “But meaningful progress only happens when AI development is grounded in real clinical environments and driven by the needs of patients, families, and care teams. That is what makes this collaboration so important.”
Over the last three years, the AI health science research partnership between Children’s National and Virginia Tech has evolved into a broad effort to build infrastructure, research pipelines, and translational pathways capable of moving pediatric AI innovation from concept to clinical impact.
Building on a strategic partnership and years of collaborative projects, symposium organizers announced the launch and continued support of theChildren’s National & Virginia Tech Pediatric Health AI Innovation Hub, uniting world-class clinical and computational expertise to improve the health and well-being of children and adolescents.
“Children have historically been underrepresented in AI research despite having fundamentally different physiology, disease patterns, and developmental needs,” said Marius George Linguraru, principal investigator in the Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation and director of the division of AI research at Children’s National. “We have an opportunity to build pediatric AI the right way from the beginning by developing and validating these technologies specifically for children and within pediatric clinical settings.”
Organizers said that advancing pediatric AI will require close collaboration between pediatric clinicians, biomedical researchers, and AI experts across institutions.
“Pediatric health presents some of the most complex challenges for artificial intelligence, from limited data to rapidly changing biology,” saidNaren Ramakrishnan, University Distinguished Professor and director of the university’sSanghani Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics. “Over the past two iterations of this symposium, we’ve seen successful partnerships emerge between Children’s Hospital and Virginia Tech, and we hope to build on that momentum by creating even more collaborations and relationships moving forward.”
For Children’s National leaders, the symposium represented more than an annual gathering. It reflected Children’s National Hospital’s position as a leading hub for pediatric AI innovation and translational research. “Artificial intelligence will play a major role in the future of pediatric medicine,” Bollard said. “Our responsibility is to ensure these technologies are developed thoughtfully, ethically and in ways that ultimately improve the lives of children and families.”
Speakers shared examples of how AI is being applied across pediatric research and clinical care.
“AI has a role in the delivery of pediatric healthcare and across the entire ecosystem, from basic discovery science to translation to clinical implementation,” saidMichael Friedlander, executive director of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC and vice president for health sciences and technology. “We need to embrace AI at all levels, from basic scientists to translational researchers to clinical healthcare providers. Our institutions will continue to make major commitments to move this work forward.
“We are on the precipice of an extraordinarily exciting time in pediatric healthcare, discovery, translation, and implementation,” Friedlander said.
The keynote address at the symposium was from Rod Tarrago, chief medical information officer for pediatrics at Amazon Web Services, who explored how AI and advanced technologies could support the “quadruple aim” in healthcare by improving patient outcomes and patient experiences, reducing costs, and supporting clinician well-being.
Erika Kim, program manager of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Health Resilient Systems, introduced the agency’s Pediatric Care eXpansion program and how to scale data and knowledge networks across the U.S. Other invited speakers Kirk Roberts from the University of Texas Health Center and Ananth Allapragada of the Baylor College of Medicine, Texas, respectively spoke about natural language processing in clinical notes and AI automation.
Sally Allain, Virginia Tech’s chief health sciences growth and innovation officer, moderated the second session, which focused on the Pediatric Care eXpansion program and systems powering biomedical discovery in epilepsy and clinical applications. Sarah Clinton, the university’s health sciences associate vice president for planning and strategy, moderated the third session, highlighting how AI is helping researchers uncover new insights into disease biology and risk.
Speakers emphasized that while enthusiasm around AI continues to grow, successful implementation in pediatric healthcare depends on ensuring tools are reliable, safe and integrated into clinical workflows.
Researchers from Virginia Tech examined how machine learning approaches are deployed to speed up and increase the precision of fundamental discovery, such as in analyzing pediatric seizure disorders, monitoring the chemical activity in patients’ brains, and in early identification of rare disease including pediatric immunological disorderswhile collaborators from Children’s National discussed approaches from evaluating AI tools designed for pediatric mental health settings and improved access to healthcare in emergency department settings.