Innovative strategies are needed to develop an evidence-based health system for the aging population to integrate technologies for home-based healthcare. The National Institute on Aging (NIA) www.nia.nih.gov within NIH issued the Funding Opportunities Announcement http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-AG-16-021.html titled “Collaborative Aging (in Place) Research Using Technology” (CART) (U2C).
Along with NIA and the Veterans Administration, other organizations participating include NCI www.nci.nih.gov, NIBIB www.nibib,nih.gov, NINDS www.ninds.nih.gov, NINR www.ninr.nih.gov, OBSSR http://obssr.od.nih.gov, and recently, the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) http://ncats.nih.gov joined the other organizations.
The FOA’s purpose is to conduct future research using technology to enable aging in place particularly emphasizing people from under-represented groups. The goal is to find ways to integrate data, incorporated existing data, and accommodate future technologies.
Future studies need to be designed to assess, predict, and intervene across a variety of observational and clinical research studies and settings that will apply to a range of measures, diseases, and populations.
The infrastructure development will include a demonstration project (Phase 1) to test the feasibility of operating on a larger scale and will serve as the foundation for the subsequent large-scale development project for technology research. Future work (Phase 2) in the research program will stress the ability to help reduce hospitalizations, emergency room visits, and admissions to nursing homes for the elderly.
The eligible FOA respondents can be from universities, nonprofits, for-profit organizations, governments, plus other groups. Successful applicants should be multidisciplinary with strong partnerships in engineering, computer science, and health and medical researchers from both the public and private sector are encouraged to apply
The intent is commit an estimated $7,000,000 to fund one award over four years. The award budget is limited to $1,250,000 in any given year for the project that is expected to last four years. The FOA was posted October 21, 2015, the Letters of Intent were due December 28, 2015 with the application due January 28, 2016.
For more information, email Nina Silverberg PhD at silverbergn@mail.nih.gov.