Hello Friends 👋

Exciting news for neonatal professionals worldwide! Registration for virtual attendance is now open for the groundbreaking Delphi Neonatal Innovation Conference, set to take Fort Lauderdale by storm from September 23-25. Whether you're joining in person or tuning in remotely, prepare for an unparalleled experience in advancing neonatal care.

Hosted by Ben Courchia and Daphna Yasova Barbeau from the Incubator podcast, this conference promises a unique blend of cutting-edge content and networking opportunities. Highlights include three free workshops: Point-of-Care Ultrasound with state-of-the-art equipment, Artificial Intelligence in Neonatology, and Narrative Medicine. The event features exciting pitch presentations showcasing innovative neonatal technologies, from synchronized high-flow nasal cannula to wearable phototherapy devices.

Don't miss the fellowship trivia competition and a special TEDx event with prestigious speakers. An evening of powerful storytelling by NICU professionals promises to be a moving experience.

Virtual attendees will enjoy high-quality live streaming of main sessions, ensuring no one misses out on this transformative event.

With its focus on practical innovation and networking, the Delphi Neonatal Innovation Conference is set to be unmissable. Register now, whether in person or virtually, to be part of advancing neonatal care!

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Embark on a journey of neonatal discovery and advancement - Register here!

Check out the Program here:

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The transcript of today's episode can be found below 👇

Ben Courchia MD (00:00.942)

Hello everybody, welcome back to the incubator podcast. We are here with this special episode to talk about the upcoming conference that we are putting together, the Delphi Neonatal Innovation Conference. Daphne, how are you?

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (00:13.841)

We are one month away. Holy moly. know, every time these projects had started, they seemed so far away, but it is upon us. We've done so much work. We're so excited. We're excited that people are excited, I think, about all the fun things, the dynamic sessions that we'll talk about today.

Ben Courchia MD (00:16.255)

One month away.

Ben Courchia MD (00:35.479)

Yeah, I feel like if I had to give some feedback to our team about our planning is that we spend so much time curating the content of the conference, making sure that for the people who are registered and who are coming, it is really a unique opportunity that we don't spend as much time on social media, boasting and, but we work so hard in the background to bring the right people to talk about the most interesting subjects and

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (00:43.875)

for sure.

Ben Courchia MD (01:03.692)

And that was the feedback that we got last year. think the people who were there were like, this was nothing like I've ever attended before.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (01:11.171)

think too, it's not to interrupt you, Ben, which I'm always doing, the other thing about the speakers, okay, we've got some rising stars, we've got some big names in neonatology, but I think what's cool is we really pushed them to say, like, give us a talk you've never given before. If you could give the talk that you wanted to give without any restrictions, what would that look like? And people really rose to the occasion.

Ben Courchia MD (01:14.183)

which you're doing, but that's okay.

Ben Courchia MD (01:31.469)

Yeah.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (01:39.085)

last Delphi and I am really interested to see what we're going to get this year.

Ben Courchia MD (01:44.61)

Yeah, and that's the thing that we've always been fortunate with our kind of setup that we're kind of independent. We're not beholding to any society or anything like that. So we invite whoever we feel is doing good work. We talk about whatever topic we think is current. And that really gives us a lot of latitude when it comes to really bringing these topics to life. So I would like, there's a lot of things that are happening this year that I would like to go over so that people can actually...

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (01:48.397)

Yeah, that's right.

Ben Courchia MD (02:13.09)

be aware. So if you are considering, if you're already registered, you can just listen to this and get more psyched. if you are not exactly, but if you're not already registered, let's go over some of the things that are going to happen this year. I guess the first thing that is very exciting is that we'll have workshops this year. Quite interesting. So we have three workshops that are going to be given throughout the duration of the conference. Our goal was really to make this available to everybody attending.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (02:20.141)

Get pumped, yeah.

Ben Courchia MD (02:41.302)

It is a small conference and the goal is that if you're coming, you shouldn't find yourself butting against a workshop that's sold out and you're like, can't go. We are also putting together these workshops for free. So like, I don't like when you go to a conference, you pay for registration and then you have to pay an additional fee to attend a workshop that doesn't sit right with me. So our workshops are free. And we've made it such that the schedule is arranged so that you can attend every single workshop so that you won't have to decide whether you're going to go to one versus another.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (02:54.713)

Mm -hmm.

Ben Courchia MD (03:09.346)

there will really be opportunities to register for all three. And the fact that they're happening over the course of the three days should allow us to let you attend one each day, basically, if you want to really do all three. The first one that we're very excited about is the one on point of care ultrasound that is going to be led by Gabriel Altit from Montreal and Dr. Lauren Ruoss from Orlando. And this is kind of a unique workshop where we really worked closely with Gabriel and Lauren to try to make this a unique experience.

We thought about what do people want to know? And I think for a lot of us who have ultrasound machines now popping up in the units, it's like, how do I use this in a very meaningful way? And so that's why they'll talk to us about how to use point of care ultrasound on the crashing patients. Like, what do you want to look for? And how do you diagnose certain pathologies that really will make a life or death difference? I think this is quite exciting. There's going to be your, all these workshops, by the way.

are still open for registration. So if you are registered for the conference and you haven't signed up, please go on the website and the link is there. You can sign up for these workshops. I believe that Gabriel submitted like a little bit of pre -workshop reading material so that really we can make this as valuable of an experience as possible. But I also want to emphasize the fact that we really reached out to a bunch of companies to try to have some equipment that is state of the art. So we're very

fortunate to have this event sponsored by GE. So we'll have a lot of, a few machines from GE, the Venu Go, most notably. if you want to try your hand at using some of these devices, Baby Works, which creates these mannequins for ultrasound simulation, which are phenomenal, will also be supplying some devices. So you really can learn and test out some devices and some simulation tools that maybe you can go back to your unit and...

put in the budget before the end of the calendar year. Yeah. But it's kind of hard because I think that's another thing that we struggled with. Thankfully, we have Rooney on board with us. But if you want to invest in those devices, how do you know which one to go with? And I think coming to a conference and just testing a few of them out and say, I really like this. I really didn't like that. It should help you maybe outline a path for your respective units in terms of that.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (05:09.389)

That's right.

Ben Courchia MD (05:33.066)

So that's workshop number one. Another workshop is going to be one on artificial intelligence. This will be given by the co -founders of the Neomind AI Collaborative, Dr. Jim Berry and Dr. Ryan McAdams. And again, this is going to be a very intimate type of workshop where they'll go over kind of the state of affairs when it comes to artificial intelligence in neonatology. So how do we take what's available out there and how do we apply it to neonatal care?

They really will try to take a pulse of the group to try to see where everybody is standing, to try to make this as relevant as possible and go through demonstrations and examples to try to make this very practical and not just theoretical. One of the issues with a lot of artificial intelligence lectures, workshops in the past is that they tend to be theoretical and you leave and you're like, this sounds all great, but like, what do I do now? So Jim and Ryan will take this on and again, registration is open.

And like the other workshop, completely free. There's no, there's no, like if you're registered, you're, can just sign up and, and, and, and be there. Another workshop that's quite interesting is obviously the one on reflections led by Dr. Rachel Fleischman, which if you haven't listened to her interview, we recently interviewed her to introduce her to our community. She's a neonatologist. She's a published author and contributor to a lot of very,

well -known publication outlets like Time and the New York Times and so on. So, Daphna, do you want to tell us a little bit about this workshop?

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (07:10.273)

Yeah. So this one is kind of, it's an intro to narrative medicine. So I think there are two neat opportunities. The first is just to do a reflection. So maybe you'd been thinking about writing, you'd like to do some writing. You just want to clear your head for the day. You've got a lot going on. I think this is a kind of neat, experiential opportunity.

And I think especially if you're interested in taking back some of these skills to your units, either because you work with trainees or you want to do it with your staff or potentially with parents, I think that you will get a lot of education on how to do this yourself with other members of your kind of home community. So I think that's really exciting.

Ben Courchia MD (08:03.35)

It is an art, right? mean, if you want to write about your experiences, I mean, I my issue is that I end up writing a case report every time. It's sort of like, that's what you get trained to do. But sometimes you just want to do a brain dump of some of the things that happen. And Rachel is so good because of her experience. So definitely a unique opportunity. And like we said before, for these workshops, we really try to bring workshop leaders that are kind of, you would be excited to learn from.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (08:05.315)

Yeah.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (08:10.359)

That's right.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (08:30.617)

for sure. Experts, for sure.

Ben Courchia MD (08:31.838)

it's not like a writing student from some college that's coming in. Like it's someone that really would be a great opportunity. And again, these are people that we picked that are always open for collaboration. So you don't know if this workshop doesn't translate into a meaningful collaboration down the road with these individuals. If you want to enter these texts that are keep popping into your phone.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (08:53.027)

I know, I didn't know if you could hear them or not. They linked to my computer all of a sudden. I'm working on it, I'm working on

Ben Courchia MD (09:00.366)

The other exciting thing that we have this year is that we have a fellowship trivia competition. So we're going to let fellowship programs compete with one another on the stage for an educational grant award that is being sponsored by the Neonatology Review Podcast, Dr. Brodsky and Martin and us. So we're very excited about that. This is going to be just fun. Like the questions are fun and...

And we're going to try to be a little bit like, it's going to be interactive. So you're not going to be like in the audience, just listening, but the fellows can pull the audience and, you can, we'll see, we'll see how that, how that all plays out, but, it's going to be a, I mean, I love trivia contest.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (09:31.459)

That's right.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (09:45.434)

I think for everybody to get a little rowdy, you know like that

Ben Courchia MD (09:48.896)

Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. If you are in fellowship and you say, I want to come down and take part in the trivia competition, think we have maybe like one spot left. One spot left. So please, there's a form that you can fill out to submit your candidacy and then send it quickly. You do get discounted. You get like a serious discount on the registration to make it

palatable for fellows and so on. So that's that. But yeah, so at least that makes it easier for our fellows. But this is going to be exciting. And I'm hoping that this might be the beginning of a legacy event where people come back to. So I love trivia competition. And I had fun writing some of these questions. OK, so then what are we talking about next, Daphne?

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (10:49.241)

Well, we have some, we have the workshops, but then we have some, series of kind of special events throughout the conference.

Ben Courchia MD (10:55.682)

That's correct. The first one is we're bringing back the pitch presentations. These are short eight minute talks where people can come and present an idea or product or project or something they're working on. And last year, this was a hit. Like this was a hit.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (11:01.571)

That's right.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (11:13.397)

Yeah, I think it was the most popular thing. And so it's been so popular, we're doing two of them.

Ben Courchia MD (11:19.948)

Yeah, we received an overwhelming demand for presentations. So we ended up having to open a second pitch session. And we're very excited about some of the stuff that we're presenting. I mean, when we're talking about innovation, again, this is the theme of this conference. We're going to have Jennifer Beck coming to talk to us about maybe a new device that is basically synchronized high flow nasal cannula, which to me sounds phenomenal. We're going to have

Another group talked to us about a device that they're working on to try to really make kangaroo care easier to achieve for parents of babies who are intubated. I think that's something that we're all struggling with. Last year, Nora Coleman told us about how we can organize our entire NICU to try to make these transfers from bed to chair less risky. And so we all know that baby's intubated going from the bed to the mother's or the father's.

is always a dangerous process. So whatever we can do, it's always welcomed. We're going to have Mark O'Sullivan from Neurobell who's going to basically show us how we can get a 12 lead EEG with a device that's like as smaller than an iPhone. So if you're struggling to get more video EEG in your unit, this is small and might be a...

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (12:32.845)

Very cool.

Ben Courchia MD (12:42.198)

an opportunity in the future. I saw the device recently. It is so freaking cool. Yeah. And we're going to have Bob Jenney, who's going to talk to us about how measuring end tidal carbon monoxide can actually really help you diagnose hemolysis in the context of hyperbilirubinemia. This is kind of an impressive new tool that's going to become, in my opinion, the standard of care. we'll see.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (13:05.186)

And it's already, if you're using the Billy tool, it's already included there, you know?

Ben Courchia MD (13:09.314)

So that's what I had the discussion with Bob about, because if you're using Billy tool, just so you know, you'll see that it's one of the things you can check off. How insane is that as a risk factor? no one that I spoke to, everybody that I spoke to, I'm like, are you using that? They're like, I never noticed this checkbox. And so anyway, so they'll come talk to us about that. We're going to have some people come talk to us about wearable phototherapy devices. Needless to say,

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (13:18.527)

As a risk factor. Yeah, that's right. But our technology is very behind. That's right.

Yeah.

Ben Courchia MD (13:38.872)

There's a lot of cool stuff. think we have another group presenting a non -invasive continuous blood pressure monitoring that's just as good as invasive arterial monitoring. When it takes basically the data from this device, coordinates it with your pulse ox, it is something that is, I cannot talk about it. I'm not doing it justice, but it is so much fun. my God. And what's interesting about these pitch presentations is that they're all centering around the call of action. So last year, for example, many of the people who pitched were like, we're looking for people to help us test this device out. So

It's not like you're going and saying, it's a product presentation. These are innovations. And so if you are interested in taking part in using these devices for QI or anything like that, you should talk to the people at the conference. And you potentially could be rolling this out in your unit in the form of a QI or something else. But yeah, this is very exciting. And that's our pitch session. Do you have, what else? I mean, we're doing a special event on Monday night for, yeah.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (14:13.849)

Mm -hmm.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (14:37.273)

Yeah, we always like to do just like an evening get together, which lots of conferences do. But I got to tell you, last year, I think we had almost like 95 % attendance in this evening activity and nobody wanted to leave.

Ben Courchia MD (14:48.13)

and no one wanted to leave. I was so tired at the end, I wanted to go home, but everybody was still there and I'm like, I feel bad leaving.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (14:54.521)

I think the conference attracts people that are just like, they're just excited about the work. So they just want to chat and keep networking and keep making plans. So it was really, really fun. We're going to do something a little different this year. It's kind of the opposite of the narrative medicine workshop, but it's an opportunity for people, I think, to get this storytelling experience without having to put themselves out there. So we have...

eight, at least eight very moving, I would say, stories from people in our community and that they're going to share. So we'll have food, we'll have drinks, we'll have opportunities. If you're like, you know what, don't feel like storytelling, hearing storytelling today, I'm going to step out and just chat out here. That's fine. But to give people this, a reflection on, that's it's called reflections, a reflections on

Ben Courchia MD (15:35.768)

Yeah.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (15:54.115)

kind of the humanity in the NICU and some of the difficult work that we do, some of the powerful work that we do, just, we hope it is an opportunity where everybody like feels a little bit seen with the difficulties of working in the NICU. Me too. That's right.

Ben Courchia MD (16:08.108)

Yeah.

Ben Courchia MD (16:11.948)

I'm looking forward to this event specifically because I'm not talking. And it is at the hotel by the pool. I will be, I'm very much looking forward to this to online speak to people that I haven't seen for a while and listen to again, these reflections that you and Rachel have been working on with this group so diligently over the past few weeks. So yeah, this is really cool.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (16:21.645)

Yeah.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (16:32.855)

Yeah, and I'll tell you, we've got some work that, you know, from published writers, from new writers who have been working. This is not an amateur show, though. I want people to know. People have been working for months and months and months on these pieces in collaboration with Dr. Fleishman just for our community, just for this special event.

Ben Courchia MD (16:44.811)

yeah.

Ben Courchia MD (16:53.71)

Yeah. Another special event that we're always very proud of is our TEDx event. So we have a TEDx event on Tuesday afternoon. It's an officially licensed TED event where people come and give TED talks. We have an exceptional lineup of TED speakers this year. And again, this is our opportunity to bring people to talk about innovation from within medicine, from within our field, and also from outside our field.

We have a long list of speakers that are all more prestigious than the other. We're going to have Bruce Becker from California, who's going to talk to us about how the environmental crisis and its effect on pregnancy and perinatal outcomes. You want to tell us a little bit about Cheyenne and Larry, maybe, because these are pretty impressive speakers as well.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (17:48.971)

Yeah, we've got some, Cheyenne is a member of our local here, Seminole Tribe, and really kind of talking about cultural competency and reflection on how we can incorporate nature and spirituality into medicine. And then Larry, accompanied by Jackie Eisen, they are going to

Ben Courchia MD (18:16.182)

Yeah, Larry Carino, right as his name. didn't mean to... Yeah, for sure.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (18:19.339)

Yeah, no, that's okay. They're going to talk to us about marketing oneself, like from a PR perspective. And I think sometimes as physicians, as healthcare professionals, we don't recognize the importance of this in our day -to -day lives with our patients, with our families, with our hospital systems, with our staff that we work with. So I think this is going to be a presentation as well.

Ben Courchia MD (18:45.612)

Yeah. We're also bringing Barbara Kellerman, who's a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Center for Public Leadership. She recently wrote a book about bad leadership when the bad festers. She was recently on the Harvard Business Review IdeaCast podcast and her views on leadership are exceptional. So she's going to talk to us about that. Also very excited of having on Alexander Pasta, who if you are on YouTube and love Lego.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (18:56.557)

Mm -hmm.

Ben Courchia MD (19:15.52)

You might know him. He is a LEGO master builder. He is at LEGO Land Discovery Center in Arizona. And he has millions of subscribers on YouTube. But basically talking to us about creativity in the context of limitations, I think that's very interesting, something that in his work within LEGO is interesting because they're obviously very limited by the pieces that they're given and how you can break through that and remain creative. think that's something that probably is relevant for many of us.

This is not an exhaustive list. There are more people coming to talk at the TED event. It is a sought after event that we're very fortunate to have been able to put together. And we thank the TED team for continuing to trust us with our TEDx license. So we're very excited about that. We're getting towards the end of this episode. I wanted to mention maybe a few important things. We'll have some incubator swag to give out if you are coming in person. So maybe another incentive to show up.

And if you really cannot make it to the conference, we understand how life gets in the way. And we're very excited this year to have really allocated a portion of our conference budget for virtual attendance. as of today, well, maybe a few days ago now, because this is not airing on the day, but as of today, you can actually register for virtual attendance on the incubator website. And basically, this will give you access to a live stream. You'll get a link.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (20:30.073)

you

Ben Courchia MD (20:43.52)

username, password stuff a few days before the conference. And we really made sure that this is shot in high definition. So you're not going to get the CCTV footage of the conference. This is not what it is. This is done professionally. We're bringing professional videographers, so you'll get a very nice live stream of the conference. You won't get to see the workshops. You won't get to see some of the stuff that we're talking about. But at least we're hoping that this makes it up if you are the one holding the fort in your unit.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (20:53.529)

That's right.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (21:10.115)

Mm

Ben Courchia MD (21:10.466)

Thank you for your work if you're doing that, and we're hoping that this makes it up.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (21:15.561)

And the streaming technology has been a painstaking portion of the logistics here, right, that you've taken on. So I hope people really value how good this looks.

Ben Courchia MD (21:24.236)

I felt like a diva because my only, my request was I told Mark, who's our videographer, I'm like, Mark, I don't care. It just got to work. And there's no, opportunity for downtime failure. He's like, okay. So I don't know what they did. They came with equipment to see if the data rate within the auditorium, like whatever, but it works. So, and they were sure that us, that the stream will be of a high definition and again, professionally filmed. So really.

happy that this is working out. And that really is a cursory overview of our conference. I think the one thing that we've mentioned here and there that is, in my opinion, the biggest attractive feature of our conference is the ability to meet and network with the great minds of our field and really get excited about projects. So we really are thankful for everybody that has come last year, that is coming again this year. And we look forward to seeing you all.

in Fort Lauderdale in a couple of weeks.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (22:22.713)

Sounds good, buddy. Can't wait.

Ben Courchia MD (22:24.728)

Sounds good, definitely. Thank you so much. Bye guys, take care.