The newest University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) startup, which is working to redefine cystic fibrosis care around the world, also marks a milestone.
Dream a Little Dream (DALD) is UAB’s first nonprofit startup. It was founded by UAB Professor Hector Gutierrez, M.D., the Raymond K. Lyrene Endowed Chair and Director of the Division of Pediatric Pulmonology at Children’s, as well as Associate Director of the UAB/Childrens of Alabama Cystic Fibrosis Center.
After years of improving patients' outcomes at UAB, Gutierrez and his team saw an opportunity to provide that expertise to others.
“Over the years, our team went from being one of the poor-performing centers to one of the best in the country,” Gutierrez said. “We realized we could share what we learned with others who didn’t have the same resources.”
Hector Guiterrez, M.D., founder of DALD.
The idea for DALD originated years ago, when Gutierrez recognized that his expertise in quality improvement and team performance could help improve outcomes for cystic fibrosis patients well beyond UAB. He envisioned forming a startup that would make it easier to share his tools and findings with clinicians and researchers around the world.
DALD’s mission is to improve cystic fibrosis care in underserved and resource-limited regions around the world by promoting collaboration and team efficiency. Instead of introducing new treatments, DALD helps medical professionals work together more effectively using their existing resources. Additionally, he and his team developed a highly functional information management tool (REDCap Registry) that serves as both a patient management system and a registry, similar to those used in advanced economies but designed for low-resource settings.
Before DALD became an independent nonprofit, Gutierrez started developing his collaborative lung-care model through his work at UAB and partnerships with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. In 2014, his UAB team launched its first pilot program at a small hospital in Santiago, Chile, with early support from Laps for CF (a Birmingham-based nonprofit), Children’s of Alabama, and UAB’s Department of Pediatrics.
Those “angel investors,” along with guidance from the CF Foundation, helped expand the program’s reach. Over the next decade, his UAB center worked directly with eight teams and indirectly supported a dozen more across Latin America and the Middle East, laying the foundation for what would eventually become DALD.
Since 2022, teams trained by the UAB team have observed notable improvements in lung function across all age groups, reductions in infections and pulmonary exacerbations at each participating hospital, and enhanced efficiency, enabling physicians to see more patients without increasing costs.
As the program’s international collaborations expanded, managing them within the university grew increasingly complex. To continue that work more flexibly, Dr. Gutierrez and his colleagues established DALD as an independent nonprofit. With guidance from the Harbert Institute, DALD officially launched as UAB’s first nonprofit startup in September 2025, setting a precedent for future ventures.
“At the HIIE, we always aim to highlight the impact of our researchers’ work,” said Karthik Gopalakrishnan, Senior Director of the HIIE. “This nonprofit model represents another path for UAB innovation to make a difference globally. The DALD registry helps connect patients with the right treatments, ensuring that limited resources are used effectively while improving care for people with cystic fibrosis around the world. That’s the true goal of research at UAB, turning discovery into meaningful change.”
As DALD’s network expands, the vision stays the same: to empower local medical teams to become trainers themselves, improve care, manage data effectively, and create a ripple effect that strengthens cystic fibrosis care worldwide.
“We’re building a model that’s sustainable, scalable, and deeply human,” Gutierrez said, adding that DALD stands for Dream a Little Dream, a motto suggested by Laps of CF officials. “The dream is for every patient, everywhere, to have access to quality care.”
For more information about DALD and the CF Network, visit https://www.daldfoundation.org/ and https://cftrainingnetwork.org/.
-- Nov. 14, 2025