#390 - End-of-Year Wrap-Up: What’s Changing for The Incubator in 2026

Hello friends 👋

As 2025 comes to a close, Ben and Daphna reflect on a year of growth, community, and evolution for The Incubator Podcast. In this end-of-year wrap-up, they preview major changes coming in 2026, including new standalone podcast feeds, expanded journal club content, CME opportunities, and exciting partnerships with organizations like the Vermont Oxford Network and PAS. They also share what’s ahead for the Delphi Conference and offer a candid look at their personal and professional goals for the year ahead. Thank you for being part of this extraordinary neonatal community.

Link to episode on youtube: https://youtu.be/VTnickf-9Cg

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The transcript of today's episode can be found below 👇

Ben Courchia, MD (00:00.78)

Hello everybody, welcome back to The Incubator Podcast. We are back this Sunday for a special episode. This is our end-of-year wrap-up. Daphna, happy holidays. How are you?

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (00:09.285)

Same to you, same to you. Wow, what a year it’s been. I mean, in the whole world, in our unit, but especially for the podcast. It’s been an interesting year, but for the podcast, it’s been a year of growth, I think, and maturation. We’re really proud of some of the success we’ve had.

Ben Courchia, MD (00:13.582)

Yeah.

Ben Courchia, MD (00:32.494)

Yeah, the podcast is the platform of the community. It’s not what it is without the feedback of the community. So we thank you all for your support. We thank you all for engaging with us, engaging with the content. It’s really what is helping to shape this particular platform. So we’re very excited today to talk to you a little bit about some of the things that are coming for 2026. And just… I guess, Daphna, let’s… So I think, yeah, I think that the first thing I want to really talk about today is some of the changes that people are going to notice on the podcast starting maybe January 1st. Over the years, we’ve really tried to make the platform that we’ve created available for other people who are doing very good work or who would like to share information and content about their areas of interest.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (01:03.791)

Yeah, let’s have some fun.

Ben Courchia, MD (01:27.054)

I think that you’ve seen on the podcast, for example, the emergence of a series such as At the Bench hosted by Betsy Crouch, David McCulley and Misty Good, where they interview neonatal physician scientists and they talk a little bit about life at the bench. This has been a very popular series. Mbozu Sipalo and Shelley Ann Williams do a great series on global neonatal health and they talk to physicians and providers all around the world working in low and middle income countries. I think that’s also been very popular. Our partnership with ICU Baby for the series Beyond the Beeps has been great where we give a voice to families. So I think that all these series have been tremendously successful. I think they’ve grown into their own shows. And I think that our platform has now become a little bit too small for all of them. So starting, it’s a great problem to have. Starting January 2026, each of these series is going to have its own podcast. So if you want to continue listening to At the Bench, if you want to continue listening to the Global Neonatal Podcast, if you want to continue listening to Rupa’s Fellows Friday, if you want to listen to Beyond the Beeps…

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (02:26.939)

It’s a good problem to have.

Ben Courchia, MD (02:48.974)

…they will each have their own podcast, named exactly like the name of the series. They’re still going to be hosted under The Incubator channel. So we’re continuing to support these amazing clinicians who are trying to do strong work in medical education. And the format is going to stay the same. They will just have their dedicated platform. I think that also this will respond indirectly to some feedback that we’ve received from the community about making things easier to find.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (02:52.773)

Mm-hmm.

Ben Courchia, MD (03:18.892)

I think the website has been phenomenal. You can go on our website and really filter episodes by series. You can filter episodes by topics. You can do so many different things. It’s a great educational resource. That being said, if you are within the Apple Podcasts app or if you are within Spotify, then this might make things easier for everybody. But we’re also very proud of the fact that this is a testament to the fact that these guys have been consistent in putting out terrific content. One of the things, I mean, yeah, I want to tease this, but this week on the episode, we’re going to review the paper published in JAMA about the outcomes of 21 week… and Daphna, you’re going to review for us the editorial. The editorial is published by Dr. McElroy, who was on At the Bench, right? And so really, really phenomenal type of work. So we’re very excited about that. When it comes to our main channel, what you will find is basically episodes of journal clubs. We’re going to release episodes Monday through Thursday. So every day we’ll have a new article. And then on Friday, we’ll try to review an article from mainstream media that talks about neonatology. I think there’s a lot of things coming out in the news. Parents are reading about it. We should be familiar with it. And we’ll try to compile all of that into one big episode if you just want one episode that’s going to last like an hour and a half. And we’ll continue, once every two weeks, with a little sit-down with people, whether it is in the form of an interview or like a Tech Tuesday. So that will streamline the podcast as well. Daphna, what do you think? These are the first set of changes that I wanted to mention. Obviously, we’re going to talk a little bit about more things, but yeah.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (05:07.256)

Yeah, I think to your point, we’ve got such a great group of people who are invested in bringing their perspective to the community, and each podcast is done extraordinarily well. So definitely, I think if people haven’t tuned into some of those other podcasts, you think, “Maybe that’s not for me. That’s not what I do.” I have learned so much from our colleagues who are, I mean, now all over the world, and their interviews are coming from all over the world, all types of interesting perspectives.

It just shows what an exceptional community we have, what amazing work is being done kind of like across the board. So I hope people will go and tune in, but I agree, I think this will help people get what they want when they need it. Say you do journal clubs on your drive, but you want to do the global podcasts when you run. At least this way, I think it will be easier to find. And we’re just so grateful for the teams. It’s a lot of work. We’re here, we’re clinicians, we’re putting in the work. This is something we’re really committed to. But to see other people climbing aboard with us, being dedicated to finding the time to make these other series happen, has been nothing short of exceptional. So really grateful. Yeah.

Ben Courchia, MD (06:35.34)

Yeah. And we’re continuing to support these guys through The Incubator and everything remains in the same format. Everything is still free. You can download them and the model is not changing. I think it’s just going to be access that’s going to be easier. So we’re very excited about that. We’re also launching a brand new podcast, which is not really new, but it’s going to be the Incubator Journal Clubs, where basically we’re going to create a separate podcast with a repository of all the journal clubs. This way, we’re going to start with the ones from 2025 and onward. And really, the goal is going to be to just have a place for all the journal clubs. And eventually, I think in the first quarter of 2026, our goal is going to be to make sure that this particular podcast is actually providing CME (Continuing Medical Education) credits. People have asked about this. So again, listening to your feedback, listening to what you would like this platform to become, we are actively working on these things. I’m hoping that on this particular platform that will be solely dedicated to journal club episodes, because our platform has other things as well, it will make CME accreditation a lot easier. And so we’re hoping to provide that for you all in the first few weeks of 2026. So we’re very excited about that as well. We’re going to have lots of partnerships that we’re building with other groups and organizations that are going to look like new series in 2026.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (07:49.529)

Yeah.

Ben Courchia, MD (08:00.942)

I think the one that we’re most excited about is our partnership with the VON (Vermont Oxford Network). It’s been a great pleasure this past year to engage with Lisa Houston, Dr. Roger Soll and the rest of the team at VON. The goal with VON, for those of you, if you don’t know what VON is, we’ve not done our job. But basically VON is a collaborative that collects quality outcomes data on a number of NICUs (Neonatal Intensive Care Units) specifically in North America and creates these benchmarks that we can actually help compare ourselves to.

From an educational standpoint, VON is very well known for their Grand Rounds that are happening quarterly. And what we’re hoping to do in 2026 is to have special episodes on the podcast in collaboration with VON in order to speak to the speakers of Grand Rounds and maybe extend the conversation a little bit, maybe dive a little bit deeper into certain questions and issues that came up during the Grand Rounds.

So we’re doing this again very much in sync with the community. It will be rooted in questions that people ask in the Zoom chat during Grand Rounds. So if you are attending the Grand Rounds, please engage on Zoom, and then we’ll get to those questions, and then we will actually continue the conversation with the speaker on a special episode. And we will give you props for your questions. If you put your first and last name, we will give you credit for the questions when they come up. So this will be very cool.

And we’ll review some of the big takeaways of the Grand Rounds so that for people who have missed Grand Rounds, they are not completely lost. You’ll be able to get a little bit of an overview. And hopefully then that will invite you to go and rewatch the talk altogether.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (09:30.422)

Mm-hmm. If you want.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (09:53.913)

Yeah, and the Grand Rounds are so well curated, right? They’ve really picked some high-yield topics, some exceptional speakers, and there’s just not enough time to get to all the questions, to get kind of the behind-the-scenes from the speaker. So we’re really, really excited about this partnership. Agreed.

Ben Courchia, MD (10:08.866)

Right.

Ben Courchia, MD (10:14.154)

Agreed. Some other partnerships that we’re very excited to roll out: we’ve announced, obviously, that the podcast will be the official podcast partner of PAS (Pediatric Academic Societies) 2026. So we’ll be at PAS in Boston. And I think that throughout the year, you will see The Incubator be present at a lot more conferences throughout the year. We’re already going to too many conferences by our standards. We’re traveling a lot. But we’re going to be at a lot more conferences this coming year. So please, it’s an opportunity for you to engage with the podcast. I think it’s a lot of fun to be able to get people who are listeners to then become active participants.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (10:48.922)

For sure. And it’s not so scary, right, to come chat with us?

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (11:00.1)

That wasn’t so bad.

Ben Courchia, MD (11:02.402)

But again, so look out for The Incubator podcast booth at various conferences. I think most notably at PAS will be a big one. We’re hoping to make a big splash and really help promote the conference and the content that is being presented. So if you have posters, if you have presentations accepted for PAS, send us an email. We will feature you on the podcast. We’ll be there.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (11:28.398)

Yeah, bring us your poster. Come roll it out.

Ben Courchia, MD (11:30.976)

Yeah, that’s something that we will be doing for sure.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (11:34.629)

That so fits with the mission of the original goal of The Incubator Podcast, to provide, in real time, equitable access to information. We recognize that the community is so busy and lifestyles are changing and travel is changing and people can’t get to every conference. It’s literally impossible. It’s not until we started planning Delphi, though, that we even realized how many neonatal conferences there are. And so we’re hoping this will close the gap on making it to all those conferences.

Ben Courchia, MD (12:11.886)

That’s right.

In terms of Delphi, I just want to say one more thing about collaboration. Look out for these episodes with VON. I think the first episode we’ll do with VON is regarding the NICU environment with Dr. Robert White. That will be a lot of fun.

Also, without boasting, we’ve created a platform that works effectively, and we don’t feel any sense of propriety over it. So if you have a collaborative and you’re hoping to use a new means to support the work that you’re doing, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We’d be happy to sit down and brainstorm and find ways in which we can be helpful. Maybe we can’t, and we each move on. But I think our partnership with VON and PAS and other organizations shows that these are partnerships that took months, years to gestate, and we definitely have a willingness to support whoever we can support in the community.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (13:33.754)

Yeah, I think we try to say yes whenever we can.

Ben Courchia, MD (13:37.07)

Absolutely. And so don’t hesitate. If we cannot be the right people for you, we’ll try to find the right people to make that happen for you.

You were mentioning Delphi. We’re very excited about Delphi. I’m kind of now at this point where it just needs to happen because it’s ready. Like I have everything. And let’s go.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (13:54.779)

We have a few seats left. If people can make it down here, we’d love to have them.

Ben Courchia, MD (13:59.628)

I was thinking about that. I don’t know if we have seats left, because a lot of internal people are going to be in attendance, plus we’re going to have some guests coming locally. We haven’t really accounted for these people. So I have to see. But definitely book your ticket if you haven’t. It’s going to be a phenomenal conference.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (14:03.706)

I think maybe literally a handful.

Ben Courchia, MD (14:29.035)

Daphna, tell the people about what you’re looking out for at Delphi.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (14:34.414)

Yeah, we’ve been working really hard. If you’ve ever planned an event, you know, we’re a small team. We don’t have PR, I mean, we have some help this year finally. But the decisions we made about who to invite, that was based on your feedback as listeners, and kind of our own excitement about what’s new in the community.

Collaboration always, right? The networking. We’re so glad to have Dr. Soll and Dr. Zapanzak come talk about their book, 50 Studies Every Neonatologist Should Know. We’re going to do a book signing.

Ben Courchia, MD (15:25.07)

You’re going to do a book signing.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (15:28.25)

We’re partnering with NeoMind AI to have some really cool sessions on the future of AI (artificial intelligence) in neonatology. I’m stealing yours, but you’re going to have to wait. I get to tell the people what I’m excited about.

Ben Courchia, MD (15:41.494)

When I attended conferences, especially as a young neonatologist and trainee, I really enjoyed the conferences where I got to engage directly with people that I looked up to. To be fair, some of the people we’re inviting would say that we’re peers, but we look up to them. They’re very cool people. And it’ll be very interesting for people who are coming to get the opportunity to engage. The book signing is a way to go and have a chat with Dr. Soll about clinical trials, right? We’re trying to create a space for you to have that moment. And it’s not easy.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (16:23.002)

That was always the goal of the Delphi Conference, to keep it small, to keep it intimate, to keep people engaged. People self-select. The people who come to Delphi want to talk about what they’re doing, what other people are doing, how they can collaborate. Across disciplines is not the right word, but I’m studying the lung, you’re studying the heart, you’re at the bedside. How can we work together to do something really unique? And that’s so exciting.

All of our speakers wait after their talks for people to come up and ask questions and chat. We always like to have a cool panel, and this year it’s on multiples. I think that’s going to be really fun.

Ben Courchia, MD (17:54.762)

Mary Lee Lemley is going to talk about training first responders for NRP (Neonatal Resuscitation Program), and the way she does it is absolutely insane. Dr. Jennifer Feng is going to talk about bridging the distance using tele-neonatology. Dr. Bernard Thibault is coming from Canada to talk about his work on stem cells. Brett Manley is coming from Australia to talk about what the future of clinical trials will look like for neonatology.

We have Dr. Laura and Jim Edwards. Laura is a maternal-fetal medicine physician. Jim Edwards is a neonatologist. It’ll be interesting to talk about what life is like at each end of the umbilical cord. Matt Reshavi from the Tiny Baby Collaborative is going to talk about the edges of viability. Alan Flake is going to talk about the Biobag and the artificial womb and where we’re at with that. Dr. Megan Azad is going to talk about preterm nutrition, the microbes and milk, and what the future of preterm nutrition looks like. We’re going to talk to Dr. Whitney Edridge about trying to keep mothers and babies together in the NICU, and what that environment would look like.

Dr. Robin Steinhorn is going to talk about making your career successful in neonatology. Gabriel Altit is talking about what the future of neonatal hemodynamics will look like. Liz Zekinek from Neomind.ai is talking about artificial intelligence at work in neonatology.

On Wednesday, Dr. Cheryl Shaw is going to talk about neonatal advocacy. Dr. Dimitrescu is going to talk about human-centered design and transforming CDH (congenital diaphragmatic hernia) care. Dr. Namrita Odakal is going to talk about rethinking the prenatal consult with art and creativity. And we have a workshop led by Dr. Jim Berry from NeonMind AI about applying AI tools to elevate your clinical decision making in neonatology.

On Tuesday afternoon, we have a TEDx event. Dr. Lauren Fine is going to talk about career and claiming permission to change. Dr. Phyllis Denary is coming from Brown to talk about the radical power of gratitude in medicine. We have Kevin Parry, who’s talking about blind spots and the stories we tell ourselves. He’s an illusionist and a stop motion artist. We have Lauren D. Giorgi, a musician, who’s going to talk about variability in music, and maybe we can learn some things about variability in medicine as well.

Matthew Smith, a human rights activist, is coming to talk to us about what human rights look like around us. Jan Beggar is the global leader for AI ethics at GE Healthcare, and he talks about “when AI does the work, humans can care.” Dr. Nancy Segal is going to talk about twin relations. And Pascal Van Kipnis is going to talk about how a ballerina ended up as a NICU mother. I think I forgot Dr. Laura Vader, whose talk is titled “When Rest Isn’t an Option.”

I absolutely love that lineup. I can’t wait. And then there’s a lot of very cool events. We have breakfast, lunch, Daphna is going to make sure you get fed.

And then we have a cocktail hour on Monday night. We have trivia competition on Tuesday night at The Tin Roof. It’s going to be in a pub this year. It’s going to be fun.

We are very thankful to all the sponsors of Delphi this year who are basically supporting our vision, making this possible. People at Chiesi, thank you very much. Mead Johnson, NSU, Dr. Brown, Pediatrix, Prolacta.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (22:19.524)

Yeah, we’re lucky that we’ve gotten a lot of support both locally and nationally, industry, and education partners. We’ve got some really good sponsors. And I think you’ll share a lovely list of exhibitors that we have joining us as well.

Ben Courchia, MD (22:42.798)

Yeah, we have a lot of exhibitors. I think the exhibitors are fun as well. We have OnyBiotech. We have CerGenX. We have the author of the NICZOO book, Abbott’s Small Talk, Carrot Express, HCA, March of Dimes, the City of Fort Lauderdale. I mean, we have loads and loads of partners and sponsors this year which are helping make this possible, helping a team as small as ours make this possible. So we’re very excited.

Daphna, what else do we have to talk about today?

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (23:17.434)

I think we’re getting there. I think we’ve done a pretty good job.

Ben Courchia, MD (23:20.462)

What are your personal goals for 2026?

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (23:25.754)

My personal goals? Yeah, okay. I’ll tell you what they are. As we roll into the new year, I’m going to work on my cell phone addiction. I bought a little cell phone jail, for lack of a better word. And we’ve been trialing that, putting that away in the evenings, really focusing on family, on getting enough rest, so when we get back to the unit we can be present and purposeful for my patients.

Sorry about that. My second goal is really to keep connecting with the community through the podcast. I’m excited about some of the things that we’re doing, but especially about meeting more people through our conference lineup. Professionally, we do a lot of things in our unit for developmental care and family integrated care, and our nursing team is newly energized by some of the things we’re doing in the Florida community to support NICU parents. I’m so excited that that is on the docket in our own unit. How about you?

Ben Courchia, MD (24:47.554)

Professionally, I have a lot on my plate right now. Thankfully, I cannot complain. My goal for 2026 is going to be to allocate the appropriate amount of time to the appropriate task. Sometimes I find myself doing a lot of work on a task that doesn’t deserve that much time.

Professionally, what’s interesting to me this year: I’ve started thinking a lot about shared decision-making in the NICU, understanding the priorities of parents. And I thought, why am I not doing anything about it? So I’m going to start asking families on admission what their goals and priorities are, and see how that shifts over the course of hospitalization. I’m not doing a study. I’m doing this for myself, trying to understand where families are.

And it dawned on me, why not just do it? Why not just go and ask? I’ve started doing that. It’s very interesting what you hear from parents. Specifically day one versus day 30, it’s very interesting.

And probably like you, same goals: be more present at home, more present with family. We’ll see how we make that work with everything else.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (26:12.856)

I hope people will share their goals with us. Not a New Year’s resolution, but your growth, some stretching this year. We love it when people engage with us. We love feedback and constructive ideas. I hope to see more of that coming through.

Ben Courchia, MD (26:38.412)

Yeah, you can send us emails, but definitely don’t hesitate to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. I think leaving a rating and a comment really helps us out. As you can see from the evolution of the podcast, we do listen very closely and we try to address things. We don’t want the platform to change all the time, so we take in feedback throughout the year, then we try to have a strategic vision for the following year. Every year we try to make small tweaks that are consistent with a natural evolution, all the while taking the feedback of the community.

So thank you to our partners. Thank you to Casey for sponsoring the podcast and for seeing the vision from the beginning. We cannot do this without your support. And thank you to the entire community. Thank you to you, Daphna. And thank you to our partners on The Incubator team who are helping make this possible. Jackie, Ayla, Michael, Amber, everybody. Thank you.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (27:34.394)

Feeling very lucky at the transition of 2025 to 2026. We’ve got a lot to be thankful for.

Ben Courchia, MD (27:40.492)

Yeah. All right. I’ll see you next week. Bye.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (27:44.709)

Sounds good, bye everybody.