AI Boosts Hope: Children's Mercy Expands Life-Saving Gene Therapies

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – May 18, 2026 – Children’s Mercy has announced a landmark expansion of its cell and gene therapy program, a move poised to dramatically increase access to some of modern medicine's most advanced treatments for children battling rare and complex diseases. Through a strategic collaboration with the AI-native platform Basepath Health, the pediatric health system aims to scale its delivery of these life-changing therapies, establishing a new model for care in the Midwest and beyond.

Cell and gene therapies represent a paradigm shift in medicine, moving beyond managing symptoms to targeting the root cause of debilitating conditions. For children with aggressive cancers, rare genetic disorders, and diseases like sickle cell, these treatments offer the potential for a cure, often with a single intervention. However, their delivery is extraordinarily complex, creating a significant bottleneck between scientific breakthrough and patient bedside.

"Children's Mercy has long been at the forefront of pediatric care, and cell and gene therapies represent the next frontier in what's possible for kids facing the most complex conditions," said Alejandro Quiroga, MD, MBA, President and CEO of Children's Mercy. "By expanding these highly specialized services, we're helping families access cutting-edge technology and comprehensive support—right here, close to home. This is how we continue to lead and deliver on our promise to bring the very best care to every child, when it matters most."

The Bottleneck in Breakthrough Medicine

While the pipeline of new cell and gene therapies is expanding rapidly, patient access remains severely constrained. The operational, logistical, and financial requirements to run a successful program are immense. Only a limited number of specialized hospitals are qualified to administer these treatments, leading to long waitlists and forcing many families to travel great distances for care.

The process involves intricate, time-sensitive coordination across multiple clinical and operational teams. From identifying eligible patients and collecting their cells to coordinating with external manufacturers for genetic modification and ensuring the patient is prepared for reinfusion, the logistical chain is fraught with potential delays. This complexity has limited the number of patients even established centers can treat.

This challenge is particularly acute for conditions like sickle cell disease, which disproportionately affects minority communities. New gene therapies like Casgevy® offer a functional cure, but getting the treatment to the patients who need it is the next great hurdle.

"Cell and gene therapies are opening a new era of hope for children, adolescents and young adults with sickle cell disease—treating the root cause, not just the symptoms," explained Shabnam Arsiwala, MD, FAAP, Director of Children's Mercy's Sickle Cell Disease Program. "Through our collaboration with Basepath Health, we're focused on helping more families access these therapies—while surrounding every patient with the comprehensive, family-centered support that's at the heart of our program."

An AI-Powered Operating System for Care

The collaboration with Basepath Health is designed to directly address these operational roadblocks. Basepath provides an AI-native operating platform specifically built for the unique demands of advanced therapies. It integrates intelligent workflows and provides continuous patient navigation, creating a scalable, next-generation delivery model.

This technology acts as a digital backbone for the entire treatment journey. It streamlines complex care pathways across three critical phases:

• Pre-Treatment: The platform assists in identifying eligible patients and managing their initial education and workup, ensuring all prerequisites are met efficiently.
• Treatment: It provides sophisticated treatment navigation, coordinating the intricate scheduling of cell collection, manufacturing slots, and patient conditioning and infusion.
• Post-Treatment: The system automates the long-term outcomes tracking and reporting required for these federally approved therapies, a process that can last for years.

By automating and optimizing these processes, the platform aims to significantly reduce the administrative and operational burden on clinical teams. This allows highly specialized physicians, nurses, and coordinators to focus their expertise on direct patient care rather than logistical management.

"As more cell and gene therapies come to market, the challenge is how to translate and integrate them into real-world delivery," said Akshara Reddy, co-founder and CEO of Basepath Health. "Delivering these therapies requires a fundamentally different level of infrastructure, coordination and operational alignment. Basepath enables health systems to do exactly that."

Scaling Hope: From Dozens to Hundreds

Children's Mercy is not new to this field, having first offered cell and gene therapies over a decade ago. The health system currently provides a broad portfolio of FDA-approved treatments, including Kymriah® for certain cancers, Zolgensma® for spinal muscular atrophy, and Elevidys® for Duchenne muscular dystrophy. However, capacity has been limited.

In the past year, the hospital delivered these personalized therapies to a small number of patients. With the new AI-powered infrastructure, Children's Mercy has set an ambitious goal: to treat five times as many patients over the next four years. This dramatic increase in capacity is essential to meet rising demand and shorten the agonizing waits that families currently endure.

The program is designed to be agile, scaling alongside the rapidly evolving therapeutic pipeline. As new treatments for a wider range of diseases gain approval, the system will be ready to integrate them, ensuring patients in the region have access to the latest medical innovations as they become available.

A New Hub for Advanced Pediatric Care in the Midwest

This strategic expansion is more than just an internal upgrade; it positions Children's Mercy as a critical regional hub for advanced pediatric medicine. With a stated goal of outpacing many providers across the Midwest and the nation, the institution is making a clear bid for leadership in this highly specialized space.

While other top-tier pediatric hospitals have robust cell and gene therapy programs, the partnership with a dedicated AI operations platform for scalability represents a distinct and forward-thinking strategy. It prioritizes not just clinical excellence but also the operational efficiency required to make these treatments accessible to a larger population.

For families throughout the Midwest, this means the prospect of receiving life-saving care closer to home. It reduces the immense physical, emotional, and financial strain of relocating to a distant city for months at a time for treatment. By building a world-class program with the capacity to serve the broader region, Children's Mercy is solidifying its role as an anchor of pediatric health innovation and delivering on a promise to bring hope to families who previously had few options.