Emerging technologies offer unique opportunities to improve both individual and population health. HCIRB encourages research focused on the design, implementation, and evaluation of health interventions for consumers, patients, caregivers, and providers delivered through digital tools and technologies, including wearable devices, sensors, telemedicine platforms, patient portals, and mobile applications.
Priorities in Digital Health
- Advancing the development of digital interventions that support consumers in achieving or maintaining behavior change as well as digital tools that assist patients with disease self-management
- Creating, adapting, and implementing digital tools and interventions that optimize communication between patients and their care networks (including families, friends, and health care providers)
- Exploring how digital health can facilitate the six functions of patient-centered communication: (a) exchanging information, (b) fostering healing relationships, (c) managing uncertainty, (d) responding to emotions, (e) making decisions, and (f) enabling patient self-management
- Assessing the impact of technology on equity in access to evidence-based cancer information
- Leveraging communication and behavioral science to ensure that health technologies enhance the patient experience and improve health outcomes
- Supporting the dissemination and implementation of evidence-based technologies and technology-based care delivery models, such as telehealth, that can benefit individuals across the cancer care continuum
Digital Health Initiatives
Smart Health Initiative (NOT-OD-23-165)
This joint NSF-NIH program seeks to accelerate the development and use of next generation health care solutions by funding high-risk, high-reward efforts in a variety of areas, including information science, mathematics, behavioral or cognitive research, robotics, bioimaging, and engineering. Grants in the HCIRB portfolio that have been funded under the Smart Health initiative include a study seeking to develop a novel application that leverages Natural Language Generation technology to automatically create easy-to-understand, personalized hospitalization summaries for patients, and a project aiming to develop and deploy a Multiscale Modeling and Intervention system consisting of sensor-rich smartphones, wireless medication event monitoring systems, wireless beacons, and wearable sensors to better understand and support medication adherence among cancer patients.
Administrative Supplements to Examine the Effects of Digital Tools and Interventions on Patient-Provider Communication Across the Cancer Control Continuum (NOT-CA-23-041)
HCIRB led an administrative supplement initiative for extramural investigators to examine the effects of digital tools/interventions on patient-provider communication and how patient-provider communication influences the relationships between digital tools/interventions and cancer outcomes. The 12 awards funded under this initiative in FY 2023 leverage diverse digital tools, including remote symptom monitoring, electronic medical records, and artificial intelligence (AI) to improve patient-provider communication in areas such as cancer survivorship and lung cancer screening.
NCI Telehealth Research Centers of Excellence (TRACE)
HCIRB co-leads the National Cancer Institute’s Telehealth Research Centers of Excellence (TRACE) initiative, which aims to support real world, pragmatic research capable of generating best practices for the optimal delivery of cancer care via telehealth. Four centers were funded under this initiative in FY 2022.
Funding Opportunities
| Project Title | Project Number | Expiration Date | Contacts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Smart Health and Biomedical Research in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Data Science | NOT-OD-23-165 | Dana Wolff-Hughes 240-620-0673 dana.wolff@nih.gov |
|
| Leveraging Health Information Technology (Health IT) to Address and Reduce Health Care Disparities | PAR-22-145 (R01 Clinical Trial Optional) | May 08, 2025 | Heather D’Angelo 240-276-6597 heather.dangelo@nih.gov |
| Notice of Special Interest (NOSI): Telehealth Research in Cancer Care | NOT-CA-24-033 | March 17, 2026 | Kelly Blake 240-281-5934 kelly.blake@nih.gov |
Contacts
