NIH’s https://www.nih.gov has launched a $1 million Technology Accelerator Challenge (TAC) to spur the design and development of non-invasive handheld digital technologies.
The funding will be used to detect, diagnose, and guide therapies for diseases with high global and public health impact. The Challenge being led by NIH’s National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) https://www.nibib.nih.gov is going to focus on sickle cell disease, malaria, and anemia.
The Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease (NIDDK), and the Fogarty International Center, components of NIH, are partnering with NIBIB to contribute to the $1 million prize.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation https://www.gatesfoundation.org is cooperating with NIH to help accelerate the transformation of design concepts into products for low resource settings. NIH will award up to $500,000 for a top finalist and smaller awards to about five semi-finalists.
The Gates Foundation will separately review winners and honorable mentions and then consider them for follow-on support. This may include a grant of up to $500,000 and/or consultations, partnerships for clinical data collection, software development, scale-up, and manufacturing.
Accessible diagnostic tools are essential for providing treatments and cures for some of the world’s highest burden diseases. While diagnostics currently exist for sickle cell disease, malaria, and anemia, they can be challenging to deliver in low-resource settings, particularly at the population level. This is due to cost, invasiveness, and the expertise required to administer the tests.
The current TAC is designed to stimulate the development of a platform technology that could be used to rapidly screen large populations as well as provide physicians with a practical tool for optimizing therapy in individual patients.
For low resource settings, diagnostics would ideally be portable, self-contained, low-cost, adaptable to multiple diseases, and able to integrate information about the patient and the environment in interpreting the test results.
Dab Wattendorf, Director of Innovative Technology Solutions, Global Health at the Gates Foundation, said, “Handheld low cost tools can bring testing out of a laboratory and to the point of need. Digitally enabled tools can help provide objective guidance for those administering a test, reduce procedural errors, and facilitate the collection of more complete diagnostic information.”
Applications are being accepted with the application deadline to be June 2, 2020. Go to https://venturewell.org/ntac for more information and for questions, go to grants@venturewell.org