Heroes Ball Funds Purchase Portable MRI Machine

Thanks to all your incredible, record-breaking support during last month’s Heroes Ball, which benefited the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) at St. Joseph’s Children’s Hospital, we have already been able to purchase a new state-of-the art portable MRI machine for our patients – the first for our hospital.

The Swoop Portable MR Imaging System, created by HyperFine, is the world’s first FDA-cleared portable point of care MRI for brain imaging. The system produces images at the point of care, without the need to transport patients to a new location for scanning.

Benefits include improving critical care neuroimaging workflow, enabling rapid diagnoses and treatment of patients, and most importantly – not requiring our young critical care patients to have to leave the comfort of their room or family member’s side. A nurse, mom, dad, or sibling will be able to hold the child’s hand, touch their face, or even hold a soother, helping to keep the patient calm and relaxed throughout the imaging process. Often, patients are relaxed enough to sleep through the scan.

St. Joseph’s Children’s Hospital is the first hospital on the west coast of Florida to receive the innovative, patient-centered system, and only the fourth location in the entire state. On-site training with the new machine, including product training and live patient scanning, will begin in June, with the goal to start using it for our PICU patients, on a case-by-case basis, soon after.