CIMIT Announces $2.5 Million in Medical Research Grants

Awards will support projects targeting brain injuries, trauma, and innovations in healthcare delivery systems

Date: August 16, 2011
CIMIT Contact: Steven Schachter, MD, Chief Academic Officer
Email: sschacht@bidmc.harvard.edu

A wide variety of early-stage, healthcare technology innovation projects in NeuroTechnology, Traumatic Brain Injury, and Integrated Clinical Environments were among those chosen to receive nearly $2.5 million in CIMIT seed grants for FY12.

From seeking novel approaches to developing and validating an integrated, intelligent sepsis monitoring system to optimizing hospital workflow and quality through patient engagement, these innovative approaches seek to improve patient care and control healthcare costs.

Also selected for awards are projects to benefit America’s wounded warriors through a novel application of non-invasive technology to detect bleeding inside the skull from head trauma and an animal study of transcranial light therapy to treat signs of post-traumatic stress following repeated concussions.

Each of the twenty-five $100,000 grants will support a multidisciplinary research team that is developing an innovative medical device or clinical system. A key goal of the CIMIT grant program is to bring together entrepreneurial scientists, often from different institutions, to accelerate medical innovation so that better care can be delivered to patients more quickly.

Through the award of seed grants and facilitation, CIMIT helps to launch new translational research projects that will then hopefully produce enough results to be able to secure outside funding for further development.

CIMIT CEO John A. Parrish, MD, remarked, “We are passionately determined to help improve the care of patients.”  He went on to explain, “By finding, funding and facilitating promising innovations, we are making it possible for clinicians and engineers to work together and ultimately to discover novel ways to provide better treatments more quickly.”

The twenty-five successful proposals were selected from over 300 applications submitted by research teams from across the CIMIT consortium. “We were overwhelmed by the record number of proposals this year and extremely impressed by their quality and potential to truly impact how care is delivered across a wide range of therapeutic areas and venues,” said Steven Schachter, MD, CIMIT Chief Academic Officer. “The funded teams have an excellent chance to have a major and potentially life-saving impact on patients.”

FY12 CIMIT Innovation Grant Recipients

Principal Investigator	Project Title	Institution	Program Area
Kumar, Sandeep	Non-invasive Brain Stimulation for Improving Stroke Related Dysphagia	BIDMC	NeuroHealth
Pang, Trudy	Development of a Stat EEG Prototype for Rapid Diagnosis of Non-convulsive Status Epilepticus for Community Hospital Settings	BIDMC	Integrated Clinical Environments
Horng, Steven	Developing and Validating an Integrated Intelligent Sepsis Monitoring System	BIDMC	Integrated Clinical Environments
Ingenito, Edward	Biopolymer Scaffolds for Promoting Mesenchymal Stem Cell Engraftment in the Lung	BWH	Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering
Hatabu, Hiroto	Advanced CT-guided Biopsy for Genome-Targeted Therapy of Lung Cancer	BWH	Image Guided Therapy
Rosas, Ivan O.	Ex-vivo Therapeutic Use of Carbon Monoxide to Rescue Donor Lungs of Marginal Quality	BWH	Inhalation Technology
Fraai, L. Michael	Hospital Readmission Reduction Pilot	BWH	Integrated Clinical Environments
McLaughlin, Bryan	A Multi-sensor Wearable Electro-encephalography (EEG) and Actigraphy System for Ambulatory Seizure Detection	Draper Labs	Neurotechnology
Madsen, Joseph	Non-invasive Vagal Nerve Stimulation for Epilepsy	CHB	NeuroHealth
Weitzman, Elissa	Improving Healthcare Transitions Using a Personally Controlled Health Record	CHB	Clinical Systems Innovation
Yarmush, Martin	Development of Immuno -Therapy Laden Scaffolds for the Prevention of Post-Burn and Traumatic Injury Infection to Enhance Wound Healing and Repair	MGH	Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering
Kang, Dongkyun	Comprehensive Microscopy for Intraoperative Margin Assessment	MGH	Optical Diagnostics Program
Lev, Michael H.	EIS as an "EKG for the Brain": Portable Point-of-Care Detection of Acute Traumatic Hematoma	MGH	Neurotechnology
Whalen, Michael	Low Level Light Therapy to Reduce Cognitive Deficits and PTSD After Repeated Concussive Traumatic Brain Injury in Mice	MGH	Traumatic Brain Injury
Hooper, David	Integrating Clinical Systems to Identify MRSA-Colonized Patients in the Outpatient Setting with Rapid Detection Methods	MGH	Integrated Clinical Environments
Levine, Wilton	Blood Ordering and Transfusion Safety System	MGH	Clinical Systems Innovation
Ottensmeyer, Mark	Low Cost, Modular Enhancements for Mannequin-Based Medical Simulators	MGH	Simulation
Hacking, Adam	Focused Ultrasound Fasciotomy to treat Extremity Compartment Syndrome (PI was Vrahas)	MGH	Traumatic Brain Injury
Goldman, Julian	Improving Continuity of Care for Veterans by Electronically Exchanging MGH, VA, and DoD Medical Record Data	MGH	Integrated Clinical Environments
Herr, Hugh	Neural Interface Technology for Control of Advanced Lower Extremity Prostheses	MIT	Neurotechnology
Bickmore, Timothy	Optimizing Hospital Workflow and Quality through Patient Engagement	Northeastern	Integrated Clinical Environments
Sipahi, Rifat	Building Handheld Devices to Accommodate Essesntial Tremor	Northeastern	Neurotechnology
Mavroidis, Constantinos	Smart Orthoses for Home Based Tele-Rehabilitation Systems	Northeastern	Neurotechnology
Cunningham, Miles	Optimizing Convection Enhanced Delivery of Therapeutics to Treat Intractable Epilepsy	McClean Hospital, HMS	Neurotechnology
Simon, Steven	Interactive Medication Reconciliation by Secure Messaging	VA BHS	Clinical Systems Innovation

About CIMIT

A clinically-based consortium of Boston-area hospitals and engineering schools, CIMIT supports translational research by multidisciplinary teams for medical device and clinical technology system applications. CIMIT attracts world-class clinicians, scientists and engineers working together with industry and government to accelerate the clinical impact of innovative technologies.