Uploaded September 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Karen Fairchild, MD, is a Professor of Pediatrics.
Transcript
What I love about research is being able to take a clinical problem from the patient's bedside to the laboratory or the clinical research environment and then bring discoveries back to patients to improve their outcomes. We can only do research through collaboration, and I've been fortunate to be able to collaborate with other researchers here at UVA, and also throughout the US and internationally. My name is Karen Fairchild, and I'm professor of pediatrics at UVA in the division of neonatology. Through research, we’ve made amazing progress in the neonatal intensive care unit, discovering ways to help premature babies not just survive, but thrive, and lead long, healthy lives. As a clinician scientist, I've done both clinical and laboratory research in several areas, including hypothermia, which we use for neuroprotection, apnea of prematurity and caffeine treatment, delivery room resuscitation, including delayed cord clamping, and most recently, analyzing vital signs to predict and prevent critical deterioration. My research team at UVA is a world leader in developing early warning systems for sepsis, which is severe life-threatening infection. We've discovered patterns of heart rate and oxygen saturation that occur in the preclinical phase of illness. So our work shows that through artificial intelligence and machine learning, we can save lives by displaying changes in vital sign patterns that can bring clinicians to the right bedside at the right time for earlier diagnosis and treatment, and improved outcomes.
Karen Fairchild, MD, is a Professor of Pediatrics.
Transcript
What I love about research is being able to take a clinical problem from the patient's bedside to the laboratory or the clinical research environment and then bring discoveries back to patients to improve their outcomes. We can only do research through collaboration, and I've been fortunate to be able to collaborate with other researchers here at UVA, and also throughout the US and internationally. My name is Karen Fairchild, and I'm professor of pediatrics at UVA in the division of neonatology. Through research, we’ve made amazing progress in the neonatal intensive care unit, discovering ways to help premature babies not just survive, but thrive, and lead long, healthy lives. As a clinician scientist, I've done both clinical and laboratory research in several areas, including hypothermia, which we use for neuroprotection, apnea of prematurity and caffeine treatment, delivery room resuscitation, including delayed cord clamping, and most recently, analyzing vital signs to predict and prevent critical deterioration. My research team at UVA is a world leader in developing early warning systems for sepsis, which is severe life-threatening infection. We've discovered patterns of heart rate and oxygen saturation that occur in the preclinical phase of illness. So our work shows that through artificial intelligence and machine learning, we can save lives by displaying changes in vital sign patterns that can bring clinicians to the right bedside at the right time for earlier diagnosis and treatment, and improved outcomes.
