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Collaborative Grants 
| CTSA Grant Helps One Team Develop Tech Solutions to Manage Chronic Disease All four of the multidisciplinary teams now shaping studies they hope will lead to further NIH funding typify the sort of collaborative ideal that the CTSAs were designed to foster. A case in point is the partnership established by 14 faculty members from three schools: The School of Nursing, P&S, and the Mailman School of Public Health (pictured on page 1). Led by Suzanne Bakken, RN, DNSc, a professor of nursing and biomedical informatics, and Thomas Pickering, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine and the director of the Center for Behavioral Cardiovascular Health, the group meets regularly to devise a way to investigate the role information and communications technology (ICT) could play in helping patients manage chronic illness. The team’s initial focus is the management of hypertension. Their bet is that ICT-assisted interventions will cost less than current care and produce a greater reduction in blood pressure and overall cardiovascular risk. Further support from the Irving Institute will help them test that hypothesis before seeking NIH funding for a clinical trial. The team’s long-term goal is developing a flexible ICT infrastructure that can be adapted to a variety of chronic conditions and tailored to the specific needs of patients from diverse socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. That’s a tall order, as team members are well aware. With expertise in economic analysis, psychology, informatics, physiology, nursing, and public health, they bring a lot of experience and knowledge to the table. But to make their plan as complete as possible, they intend to spend their $25,000 grant on the services of experts in software design, health economics, and programming, and to generate input from evaluators and patients with hypertension. And, if after six months of planning the team is not chosen as one of the Institute’s two $125,000 Phase II pilot grants? Dr. Pickering believes that the results of this collaboration will enable the team to successfully apply for other grants. “The achievement of the planning grant will be that it spawns additional grants, enabling all of this important work to move forward,” he says. |
