The KidsX 2025 Pediatric Innovation Pitch Competition brought together early-stage pediatric health innovation companies to pitch their breakthrough solutions to leaders from top children’s hospitals during the KidsX Pediatric Innovation Summit in Chicago. We’re excited to announce the finalists whose game-changing innovations stood out for their potential to meaningfully advance pediatric care. We congratulate all our finalists and extend our gratitude to every innovator who participated in this year’s competition. Their passion and creativity continue to inspire KidsX and drive the future of pediatric care. You can learn more about the finalists below. 

People’s Choice Award Winner

We’re excited to share that the audience selected Kihealth as the 2025 KidsX Pediatric Innovation Pitch Competition People’s Choice Award recipient for their innovative approach to the early identification and detection of diabetes. This recognition highlights the enthusiasm and support from KidsX children’s hospitals and pediatric innovation community.

Kihealth

KiHealth is a precision diagnostics company transforming how chronic and metabolic diseases are detected in children, before symptoms begin. Using proprietary molecular assays and AI-driven analytics, KiHealth identifies the earliest biological signals of disease, empowering earlier intervention, personalized prevention, and healthier futures. 

The company’s flagship test measures early beta-cell loss, the first measurable sign of insulin resistance and metabolic dysfunction. This innovation enables pediatricians and health systems to detect risk for diabetes and related conditions years before traditional screening methods can, offering a window to protect and preserve a child’s long-term metabolic health. 

Built on decades of translational research in autoimmune and metabolic diseases, KiHealth bridges scientific discovery with real-world clinical care. Beyond diabetes, its platform is expanding to identify early risk for pancreatic cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and systemic inflammation, all from a single, unified diagnostic framework. 

KiHealth’s mission is to make early detection the standard of care for every child and family. By partnering with health systems, research institutions, and biopharma, KiHealth is redefining prevention, helping ensure that the next generation grows up healthier, with chronic disease stopped before it starts. 

Meet the Founder: Jenna Anderson is a visionary healthcare leader and the Co-Founder and CEO of KiHealth, a precision diagnostics company transforming how chronic and metabolic diseases are detected. With more than two decades of experience leading health and wellness companies, Jenna has built her career at the intersection of science, innovation, and human impact. 

Her inspiration for founding KiHealth came from witnessing the rising rates of diseases in children and adults, often diagnosed too late for meaningful intervention. Determined to change that trajectory, she partnered with leading scientists to develop the first diagnostic technology capable of detecting early beta-cell loss, the earliest signal of metabolic dysfunction, years before traditional symptoms appear. 

Under Jenna’s leadership, KiHealth is pioneering a new standard of preventive care: one that empowers families, clinicians, and health systems to act before disease begins. Her mission is deeply personal, to give every child the chance for a healthier future through early detection, proactive intervention, and data-driven prevention. 

Jenna continues to champion innovation that bridges the gap between diagnostics and therapeutics, ensuring that prevention, not reaction, defines the future of healthcare. 

Pitch Competition Finalists

Backpack Healthcare 

Backpack Healthcare delivers accessible, personalized, and comprehensive mental health care for children, teens, and families. Our mission is to close the care gap for the most vulnerable and underserved youth by combining technology, clinical expertise, and community partnerships. Through our virtual care platform, school-based programs, and culturally responsive approach, we ensure that every child, regardless of background or insurance type, can access high-quality mental health support. Backpack Healthcare is committed to redefining how pediatric behavioral health services are delivered across the nation. 

Meet the Founder: Hafeezah Muhammad is the CEO and founder of Backpack Healthcare, a pioneer in pediatric and family mental health innovation. She blends healthcare expertise, technology, and community engagement to make care more equitable and accessible. In 2020, during the global pandemic, Hafeezah’s six-year-old son urgently needed mental health care, but she struggled to find a provider who accepted Medicaid. This experience led her to discover that more than 42 million children are on Medicaid, over 20 million experience mental health symptoms, yet only 14 percent of providers accept Medicaid. Determined to change that, Hafeezah founded Backpack Healthcare to ensure that all children and families can access the care they deserve. 

Blueberry Pediatrics 

Blueberry Pediatrics offers the KidsX network a turnkey virtual pediatric care solution that helps hospitals expand access, improve outcomes, and reduce avoidable costs. Founded and led by board-certified pediatricians, Blueberry provides families with 24/7 access to pediatric experts through video, audio, or secure messaging—delivering high-quality, compassionate care anytime, anywhere without waiting rooms or scheduling delays. 

Each enrolled household receives a connected home diagnostic kit with an otoscope, thermometer, and pulse oximeter, enabling accurate, safe diagnoses from home. Blueberry physicians manage 86 percent of visits virtually and seamlessly route the rest to appropriate in-person care, preserving the medical home and continuity of care. 

For KidsX hospitals, Blueberry can be deployed as both an employee benefit, reducing absenteeism and stress for working parents, and as a population health solution that decreases pediatric ER utilization, supports value-based contracts, and expands reach into rural and underserved communities. Among Medicaid families, Blueberry has achieved a 40 percent reduction in unnecessary healthcare costs while maintaining an NPS above 90 and industry-leading antibiotic stewardship rates. 

At Johns Hopkins, Blueberry began as an employee benefit and expanded under their value-based agreements, reducing ER costs and improving performance. Blueberry invites KidsX partners to pilot this proven, pediatric-first virtual care model. 

Meet the Founder: Dr. Lyndsey Garbi, double board-certified in pediatrics and neonatology, is the cofounder and Chief Medical Officer of Blueberry Pediatrics. She leads the company’s clinical vision and quality, helping to shape its strategy, growth, and brand. After years caring for children in hospitals and as a parent of three, Dr. Garbi saw firsthand how families struggle to access timely, high-quality pediatric care, especially after hours or in underserved communities. That experience inspired her to create a model that ensures every family can reach a trusted pediatrician whenever they need one. 

Firstday Healthcare 

Firstday Healthcare is a technology-enabled healthcare company dedicated to supporting families as they transition from Children’s Hospitals to home. The company partners with Children’s Hospitals and health systems to improve outcomes for the pediatric population—especially former premature infants graduating from the NICU—by combining compassionate clinical support with innovative digital tools. 

Through its integrated care platform, Firstday Healthcare enables hospitals to extend their care beyond the bedside, providing parents with real-time guidance, remote monitoring, and ongoing communication with clinical teams. These services help reduce readmissions, enhance family confidence, and ensure continuity of care in the critical first days at home. 

By aligning with hospital priorities and value-based care initiatives, Firstday Healthcare strengthens the bridge between Children’s Hospital and home, delivering measurable benefits for patients, providers, and payers alike. As pediatric healthcare evolves toward more connected, home-based models, Firstday Healthcare is setting the gold standard for neonatal and pediatric transition care—bridging the gap between Children’s Hospitals and home with compassion, innovation, and data-driven results. 

Meet the Founder: Dr. Ross Sommers is the founder and CEO of Firstday Healthcare and a neonatologist committed to improving outcomes for infants and families transitioning from the NICU to home. Through his years of clinical experience, Dr. Sommers witnessed firsthand the challenges families face after discharge and the limited solutions available to support them. Motivated by these experiences, he founded Firstday Healthcare to develop technology-enabled services that extend hospital-level care into the home—empowering parents, improving continuity of care, and reducing readmissions. Under his leadership, Firstday Healthcare is redefining how hospitals support families beyond the bedside through innovation, compassion, and collaboration.   

Hero AI 

Hero AI’s mission is to make pediatric care safer, faster, and more accessible by turning hospital data into timely action. Born out of SickKids, our platform was built with and for clinicians to add an automation layer alongside the EHR, continuously monitoring every patient and advancing care when it matters most. The result: earlier interventions, shorter waits, and reduced length of stay in hospitals and emergency departments.  

Hero AI connects to live EHR streams, including vitals, notes, orders, and results, and applies hospital-defined decision logic plus AI to power configurable “AI Sidekicks.” These digital teammates automate critical workflows such as consults, patient prioritization, reassessments, family communications, and much more. Each Sidekick is locally adaptable, with embedded guardrails, audit trails, and continuous performance monitoring. 

At SickKids, Hero AI Sidekicks have improved throughput, safety, and family experience. The Mental Health Sidekick, for example, reduced time to psychiatry by 55% and cut length of stay by two hours per patient, reclaiming over 1000 room hours over the past 18 months, without adding more people or space.  

Hero AI sets a new standard in pediatric innovation: always on, deeply adaptable, and purpose built to safeguard time, capacity, and trust in children’s hospitals. 

Meet the Founder: Dr. Devin Singh is one of Canada’s first physicians to specialize in clinical artificial intelligence. He is an emergency physician at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and holds a Masters in Computer Science degree from the University of Toronto. He is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto in both the Faculty of Medicine and the Division of Computer Science and is an emerging scholar helping to innovate the regulatory, privacy, and ethical landscape for AI in healthcare.  

Throughout his clinical practice, Dr. Singh saw firsthand the harms that can occur to young children when the wrong patient is accidentally left waiting too long. To combat this, he partnered with SickKids and founded Hero AI, one of the world’s most rapidly customizable clinical automation platform for paediatric healthcare.