Northwestern IT Teams Enable Research Study to Improve Pediatric Heart Health
Northwestern IT Media and Technology Innovation (M&TI) teams partnered with researchers from the Bienen School of Music and Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital to create the Fontan Practice application, critical software used in a feasibility study to understand how singing and breathwork may improve lung and, subsequently, heart, functionality in pediatric heart disease patients. The Emerging Technologies team designed and built the digital platform used in the study and coached the researcher through the Institutional Review Board (IRB) process. The Media and Event Services team recorded and produced the platform's video and audio content.
The supported research project is named for Fontan surgery, a procedure to increase blood circulation for children with congenital heart disease, which causes them to have only one working heart ventricle. Northwestern research focused exclusively on children who have undergone this surgery and are currently in post-operation treatment. While substantial research exists on the benefits of similar therapies for adults with various pulmonary concerns, the project to study singing therapy for children with Fontan physiology is novel.
Professors Sarah Bartolome and Terry Brancaccio from the Bienen School of Music approached the Emerging Technologies team with a need for a platform that would allow them to conduct the study and evaluate the applicability of the protocol they co-developed with Lurie pediatric cardiologist Dr. Andy Pelech to implement singing therapy to improve cardiac health in children with heart disease on a larger scale. The goal was to develop a program (and a delivery tool) as a proof of concept for use in pediatric centers worldwide.
We checked in with Rodolfo Vieira, manager of Emerging Technologies (ET), and Stephen Poon, digital media specialist lead, Media and Event Services (MES), to learn more about their respective team's contributions and processes and the technology and expertise employed to support this meaningful study.
Request for Support
Professors Sarah Bartolome and Terry Brancaccio from the Bienen School of Music approached Emerging Technologies requesting assistance with a research project. The project required a platform to present instructional practice videos to students and a method to record students as they watched the videos. Essentially, students needed to be able to watch on-demand content videos that guided them through practice exercises and record themselves following along. After evaluating several off-the-shelf solutions and finding none that provided a satisfactory user experience, ET committed to developing a dedicated cloud-based application designed specifically for the project's needs.
Researchers initially contacted the Media and Event Services team in January 2024 and followed up in July, when they expressed a tight and fast-approaching deadline to deliver instructional video content for a new platform.
From there, things moved fast!
Consultation on Regulatory Compliance
Before beginning the application's design and development, the ET team guided the research team through the necessary procedures to ensure the application and its use would meet all required regulatory standards. Considerable time was dedicated to addressing the privacy and security requirements mandated by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) for this type of research. The ET team collaborated closely with Bienen and Lurie Children's Hospital teams to review, propose, and refine the necessary privacy measures, procedures, policies, and language, ensuring the project met all requirements for a successful launch.
Application UI/UX Design and Development
The ET team dedicated significant effort to streamlining and refining the user experience, and the results were outstanding! Following a detailed walkthrough of the app's features, the research team, now site administrators, was fully onboarded to use the tool within just five minutes. ET ensured the application they designed was an appropriate fit for the children intended to be its primary users. The end-user flow was thoughtfully optimized for accessibility on any device students use to engage in weekly assignments, providing a seamless first-time login experience, straightforward navigation, and a focused, user-friendly interface.
Expert Quality Content
While getting the design of the delivery platform right was essential, producing exceptional-quality content was equally critical to the project's success. The video was shot over two days, and post-production work, including captioning, was completed in four weeks, in time for the application to be developed with completed content. The media team worked on a compressed timeline; in a typical project of this scale, they would require two months for the detailed post-production needed. Including all crew and post-production time, the team contributed approximately 160 hours to deliver the videos. In just under one month, the media team created eight separate studio-quality videos, ranging from 16 to 20 minutes—more video than in a standard feature film!
Many Hands Lift a Heavy Load
Stephen Poon directed all content for the instructional videos and led post-production efforts. Nate Bartlett, senior digital media specialist, and Jackson Grischeau, digital media specialist, served as cinematographers for the project and made the video subjects look their best. The project created an opportunity for colleagues who typically work on different mediums to collaborate and produce an excellent quality finished product. Isa Hernandez, a digital media specialist currently studying in the Northwestern School of Communications's Master of Arts in Sound Arts and Industries program, worked with the film team and brought their expert audio recording and editing skills to record voice and piano with exceptional clarity. The Fontan Choir project was the media team's first project focused on creating online instructional content for voice, so Isa's work was imperative.
The all-hands nature of the project also introduced the first occasion for Summer House and Dvonte Reed, both application support specialists 2, on the Technology Support Services team, to put their interest in video production into action. Both were production assistants for the project's two intense days of production.
Talented M&TI colleagues, who developed academic software and contributed to video production, combined their efforts to develop the Fontan Practice application. The team included Ken Panko, director of Media and Technology Innovation; Rodolfo Vieira, manager of emerging technologies; Vince LaGrassa, AT software developer; and Orzu Tursunova, full-stack developer.
Project Timeline
Video Production
The media team recorded instructional content from August 27–28, 2024, and edited and finished the videos by September 24, 2024.
Application Production
The application development team achieved a swift and efficient turnaround. The first source code 'git' commit occurred on September 24, 2024, and the first end-user production logins took place less than two weeks later, over the weekend of October 5–6, 2024.
Application Tech Stack
The project's research and development phase included exploring browser-based media recording, video compositing, and using in-browser persistent storage for enhanced functionality.
• Front-End: React
• AWS API Gateway + Express
• Hosting & Storage: AWS + S3, DynamoDB
Evidenced Expertise and Coordinated Partnership
Professor Brancaccio sought support from M&TI for this project, based at least partially on the success of a prior partnership. Rodolfo Vieira and other members of the Emerging Technology team previously collaborated with her on a provost grant to develop the SingerSavvy platform—a mobile web app—internally referred to as a "Fitbit for your voice" designed to help singers and voice professionals maintain and improve their vocal health through guided exercises and activity tracking.
Stephen Poon was able to draw on experience and skills developed working with faculty from Bienen and several other schools across the University to create online instructional content for Northwestern's first Massive Open Online Courses(MOOC) in 2013 to deliver the work necessary for this project.
The established trust and strength of cooperative relationships led Bienen researchers back to M&TI for help with their work intended for global impact. Trust, communication, collaboration, and synchronized production timelines allowed internal IT teams to come together and provide a seamless and exceptional solution, a testament to the tremendous value Northwestern IT brings to the University community.