HHS www.hhs.gov has just released the “2015 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Grant solicitation” (PHS 2015-2) for NIH www.nih.gov, CDC www.cdc.gov, FDA www.fda.gov, and the Administration for Children and Families www.acf.hhs.gov. The Solicitation is looking for specific research initiated topics to be submitted for funding consideration.
Some of the SBIR NIH highlights on research topics of interest involve technology needed by NIBIB, NIMHD, and NLM which are listed here. For more specific information on the rest of the NIH, CDC, FDA, and ACF solicitation, go to http://sbir.nih.gov/sites/default/files/2015-2_SBIR-STTR-topics.pdf.
The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) www.nibib.nih.gov does research on medical devices and implants. This includes doing exploratory research on next generation concepts for diagnostic and therapeutic devices, development of tools and studies to prevent adverse events, and studies predictive models to assess the useful life of devices.
They are looking to develop new medical technologies to improve outcomes for surgical interventions. Some of the technologies of interest are robotically assisted surgical systems and image guided interventions.
The agency also is looking for software and hardware for telehealth studies that have broad applications as well as early stage development of telehealth technologies that may have specific focus areas. NIBIB wants to see research on methods that address usability and implementation issues in remote settings.
The SBIR program at the National Institute on Minorities Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD www.nimhd.nih.gov is looking for technologies targeted to health disparity groups to include gene chips, diagnostics, specialized instruments, plus other technologies.
Research is needed to develop demonstration projects to help develop regional hospital-based registries for disease areas along with innovative technologies to enable the use of EHR systems and PHRs for health disparities research.
Elements could include interoperability and mapping among disparate technologies, data sets for multi-site interdisciplinary studies, and security systems to protect storage and transmission of confidential medical data.
The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) www.genome.gov involved in developing genomic databases as resource for the biological and biomedical research communities, supports several major genetics/genomics oriented databases. The Institute also provides access to genomic information and is looking to develop new databases and data science technologies.
The National Library of Medicine (NLM) www.nlm.nih.gov provides support for research and development projects in biomedical informatics and technologies to enable the use of EHR systems in clinical practices and public health. NLM is looking to explore the use of social media to track disease outbreaks, pandemics, or to assist patients in chronic disease management, and tools to use for disaster information management.
The submission dates for grant applications is September 5, 2015, and January 5 2016, and April 5, 2016.