The Opportunity
Our goal is to demonstrate the feasibility of providing genomic care across a network of NICUs in a virtual fashion. We will do this by providing NICUs with education and remote support to provide this service and keep sick newborns and their families in their locale. In addition, we would like to show that this care will make a positive impact to the lives and medical care of sick newborns in an equitable fashion. We do this in the belief that we need new ways of disseminating the benefits of genomic medicine broadly, to maximize our reach into large population centers and underserved communities equally. In the future, we would like to expand this network to other under-resourced NICUs outside of our current network that includes Boston Medical Center, BayState Medical Center, UMass Memorial Hospital and Cooper University Hospital.
VIGOR Study
Bringing virtual genomic care to NICU babies
What is VIGOR?
The VIGOR Study is an NIH-funded endeavor coordinated out of Boston Children's Hospital which collaborates with chosen NICUs that serve underserved populations. VIGOR has created partnership between these leading NICUs to develop and implement a novel virtual model for genomic care with the hopes of proving that a model of tele-genomic care is feasible and reproducible to any NICU.
Who we are
We are a team comprised of Neonatologists, Geneticists, Genetic Counselors, Nurses, Bioinformaticians and Researchers who all have a common goal of providing state of the art genomic medicine and interpretation broadly and equitably.
The challenge
Genomic sequencing is a remarkably valuable tool in the care of NICU newborns, but the machinery and support necessary to implement it tend to be concentrated in highly specialized care centers which limits access to under-resourced NICUs creating an equity gap.
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