CTSI Annual Pilot Awards to Improve the Conduct of Research

An Open Proposal Opportunity

Proposals on It And Informatics

Research Networking Software App/Gadget Development Competition

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Background/Rationale: Social networking sites such as Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn are web platforms. They allow independent applications to run within their sites to enhance the user experience, often integrating with external services to provide dynamic content as varied as reading lists from Amazon, blog posts from WordPress, to live game play from Zynga. The beauty of these external services is that they can be shared across any software platform that chooses to deploy them.

A Digital Clinical Research Center (dCRC) for Translation of Digital Health Interventions

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Rationale: The confluence of online social media, smart phones, and sensor technology is giving rise to a tidal wave of digital health interventions that have vast potential for improving health at low cost. As with consumer software, digital interventions are more likely to be effective if user feedback and determination of effectiveness is sought early and often. At present, however, researchers face high costs and difficulty in developing app ideas into prototypes, testing prototypes on real users, and validating the intervention.

“Idea to Impact” (i2i): Translational Digital Health Program

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Rationale: The rapidly evolving field of digital health has great potential to enhance biomedical research, education and clinical care. Development in this new space is largely being driven by the tech sector, where projects may lack proper clinical focus or scientific rigor and generally do not include health outcome measures to assess effectiveness or impact.

Using Mobile Technology and Game Dynamics toRecruit and Retain Research Participants

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Rationale:  Enrolling subjects for longitudinal research studies, ensuring their compliance and retaining them over a period of time pose a significant challenge to researchers. As an example, we had 62% and 30% retention at years 1 and 3 in a recently concluded study on knee osteoarthritis.

Developing and testing mechanism-based translational hypotheses

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RationaleProblem: because of multiscale complexity, conceptual, mechanism-based, in vitro-to-in vivo mapping models are hard to falsify and can be flawed in ways that may not be obvious until challenged experimentally, which can be costly.  When the results of such experiments are equivocal or not supportive, the information needed to revise mechanistic hypotheses may be lacking.  Translation of in vitro phenomena to in vivo counterparts requires a mapping model.  Currently, mechanism-agnostic correlation models are common

Extending Direct-to-Participant Recruitment on the Internet with Effective Online Self-Screening Eligibility Surveys

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Rationale: Developing efficient and effective methods to recruit and screen participants for clinical research remains a major challenge for clinical discovery.

Overcoming hurdles to patient-centered outcomes research

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The Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute is charged with facilitating informed choice by funding initiatives that create condition-specific registries designed to provide information necessary for patients to understand risks and expected benefits in terms of meaningful outcomes. Traditionally, registries require hiring personnel, not directly involved in the care of patients, to distribute surveys, review charts, fill in forms, and enter data into an offsite registry.