SwissPedNet facilitates research in paediatrics on a nationwide scale and thus meets an urgent and unmet need for paediatric translational and clinical studies. In 2022, SwissPedNet celebrated its 10-year anniversary!
Initiated by eight paediatricians from five university children’s hospitals and three cantonal children’s hospitals who were keen to conduct clinical research, a national network for paediatric research was established by the SCTO in 2012. The SCTO is proud that SwissPedNet has been recognised as a research infrastructure of national relevance since 2017 and receives direct federal funding according to the Federal Act on the Promotion of Research and Innovation. To celebrate its successes from the past ten years and share its vision for the future, SwissPedNet hosted an in-person anniversary event and released an anniversary publication on pädiatrie schweiz’s website.
SwissPedNet has very active local and multicentre study projects. In addition, several research teams from SwissPedNet’s member institutions have received funds from the prestigious Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) investigator-initiated clinical trials (IICT) funding programme. Three examples are the KIDS-STEP project investigating the additional use of cortisone in hospitalised children with community-acquired lower respiratory tract infections, the PASTA trial investigating the effectiveness of a high dose of steroids in children with stroke and unilateral focal arteriopathy, and the MyTHIC study investigating whether antibiotics are essential in treating lung infections in children.
SwissPedNet is increasingly recognised as a trusted research network. Nationally, it contributes to the activities of the Swiss Personalized Health Network (SPHN) with a project called the Pediatric Personalized Research Network Switzerland (SwissPedHealth) – a Joint Pediatric National Data Stream. Internationally, SwissPedNet is Switzerland’s national hub of the pan-European research infrastructure conect4children (c4c); since the very beginning, SwissPedNet has also been a member of the European Network of Paediatric Research at the European Medicines Agency (Enpr-EMA). Read more about international paediatric research projects in this report’s section on Swiss contributions to European projects.
SwissPedNet has
also initiated innovative training opportunities with its NextGen Program for
young paediatric clinical researchers, and the network contributes annually to
the translational and clinical research session at pädiatrie schweiz’s conference.