Midsommar at the CCHA 2026 – A Recap

From a successful debut to a growing tradition
Last year, Midsommar at the CCHA was launched as a new networking event, bringing together clinical partners, research collaborators, and colleagues from the Children’s Hospital of Central Switzerland. The positive feedback and strong engagement encouraged us to continue the initiative. This year marked the second edition, and we look forward to making it a recurring highlight every June.

Keynote: Between Limits and Possibilities
The afternoon opened with a keynote by Prof. Dr. Christian F. Baumgartner, Assistant Professor in Health Data Science at the University of Lucerne and member of the CCHA Advisory Board.

His talk, “Between Limits and Possibilities – How humans and machines can safely decide together”, traced both the promise and the paradox of AI in medicine. On the one hand, it offers earlier and more accurate diagnoses, fewer medical errors, efficiency gains, and capabilities that go beyond what humans can perceive. On the other hand, it raises a fundamental question: when AI sees what we cannot see, who remains in control?

Christian outlined how AI fails differently than humans. Its errors are often systematic rather than random, occur at scale rather than in isolated cases, and can remain largely invisible to users. The verification infrastructure cannot keep pace with the technology. His response: develop AI that can explain its decisions, enshrine transparency in law, strengthen certification standards, and shift the focus from pure tool performance toward what he called “collaboration performance”, the quality of how humans and machines work together.

Three Project Spotlights from the CCHA team & clinical partners
After the keynote, three of our recent projects were presented. Each follows the same basic principle that defines the CCHA’s day-to-day work: a healthcare professional at the Children’s hospital of Central Switzerland has an interesting clinical question, but neither the time nor the tools to extract the relevant data from the system. Together with the CCHA, the data is extracted, validated, and turned into the foundation for research and innovation.

1. DIVA Data – David Troxler (Attending Pediatric Emergency Department, KidZ) & Sergio Ruiz Carmona (Data Analyst, CCHA)
Establishing peripheral intravenous (IV) access in children is often difficult. Newborns have small veins, well-nourished toddlers can be hard to find a vein in, and children with chronic conditions often present with fragile vessels. Each unsuccessful attempt means more distress for the child and the family. Led by Dr. med. Annique Weise and supported by the Stiftung Zukunft Kinderspital, the KidZ team introduced ultrasound-guided IV access training in 2025, using a “teach the teacher” approach across nursing and medical teams. Together with the CCHA, the DIVA project aims to evaluate whether this intervention improves first-pass success and reduces the overall number of attempts. The vision: fewer attempts, less distress, and a dashboard that allows teams to monitor and target improvements continuously.

2. A new feeding concept in neonatology. A pre-post analysis – Lisa Berchtold (Nursing Expert, Neonatology) & Anna Schöni (Data Analyst, CCHA)
In May 2023, the neonatology unit introduced a revised feeding concept. Instead of switching preterm and sick newborns directly from a fixed eight-meal schedule to six meals, a new “semi-demand” phase takes early hunger cues into account before transitioning to demand feeding. The pre-post analysis compared over 1,000 newborns across four gestational age groups before and after the change. The result: while the timing of demand feeding and the weight gain afterwards did not differ significantly, hospital stays were significantly shorter for preterm infants born between 28 and 36 weeks of gestation under the new concept – a finding confirmed by a sensitivity analysis, though other unrecorded factors may have contributed. Nonetheless, these findings suggest a potential direction for further refining the feeding approach.

3. Establishing a standardized clinical dataset for pediatric pleuropneumonia – Melina Ilar (Medical student) & Marcus Werners (Data Analyst, CCHA)
Optimal treatment of pleuropneumonia (PPN) remains a clinical challenge worldwide. This feasibility study, recently also presented at the Pädiatrie Schweiz Annual Congress in Lausanne, used electronic health records to build a structured dataset on 96 pediatric PPN cases at the KidZ from 2020 to 2024. The analysis identified which data points are readily extractable, which require extensive post-processing, and which still depend on manual extraction. The conclusion: a clean, processable database is feasible, but it also highlights concrete opportunities to improve documentation at the source, with more structure and less free text. The dataset now forms the basis for the next phase of the study.

Discussion and Apéro
Each presentation sparked engaged discussions with sharp questions, new perspectives, and many valuable inputs from our guests. The format that followed brought everyone literally to their feet: an interactive discussion in which guests were asked to physically move to an “agree” or “disagree” side of the room in response to questions such as “Will AI influence the use of clinical routine data?” The room split, regrouped, debated, and the keynote speaker, project teams, and Nicole Ritz, Director of the CCHA, reflected on the emerging patterns and shared their perspectives on the opportunities and challenges ahead.

The evening then continued with a networking apéro that carried the conversations well into the summer evening.

Thank you, and see you next year
A sincere thank you to Christian Baumgartner for the keynote, to all presenters for sharing their work, and to our guests for the engaged exchange that makes events like this worth doing.

We’re already looking forward to Midsommar 2027.