National Science Foundation's Smart Health and Wellbeing Program

by: Michael Saunders

The National Science Foundation, otherwise known as NSF, is an independent agency of the United States federal government that is greatly responsible for financing research and education activities in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering.

The efforts of the NSF are always guided by their overall agency mission, which is to "To promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; and to secure the national defense."

In line with this, the National Science Foundation has constituted the development of the Smart Health and Wellbeing (SHB) Program wherein they intend to address scientific and technical issues that would pave the way towards the transformation of the healthcare process from being rather reactive and hospital centered into becoming preventive, proactive, evidence-based, patient-centered and focused on the wellbeing of the person rather than his/her disease.

The program seeks to achieve this by addressing issues that are associated with sensor technology, networking, information and machine learning technology, system and process modeling, modeling cognitive process and lastly, social and economic issues.

In this regard, the principal investigators that wish to participate in this program would have to include research studies that address the following concerns:

1) Digital Health Information Infrastructure - This dimension should include techniques and strategies that will potentially enable in interoperable, distributed, federated, and scalable digital infrastructure, languages, and tools for efficient integration and utilization of electronic health record information, as well as networked applications that can access such information.

  (continued...)

National Science Foundation's Smart Health and Wellbeing Program
  Page 2

About The Author Michael Saunders is an editor of TopGovernmentGrants.com one the the most comprehensive Websites offering information on government grants and federal government programs. He also maintains Websites providing resources on environmental grants and grants for youth programs.

Additional Resources

category - Health Grants

Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has established the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System Program wherein it intends to provide financial and programmatic assistance to State Health Departments in the process of maintaining and expanding ways of collecting pertinent health data.

---

Economic Studies Ancillary to Completed or Ongoing Health Care Delivery and Financing Pilots, Demonstrations, and Other Experiments
NIH has recently established a program entitled Economic Studies Ancillary to Completed or Ongoing Health Care Delivery and Financing Pilots, Demonstrations, and Other Experiments.

---

Agriculture and Food Research Initiative: National Institute of Food and Agriculture Fellowships Grant Program
The Agriculture and Food Research Initiative grant program revolves around the premise of providing funds to both fundamental and applied research studies, education, and extension that would hopefully address concerns related to food and agricultural sciences.

---

Health Care Innovation Challenge
The Centers for Medicare and & Medicaid Services has recently established the Health Care Innovation Challenge in an attempt to solicit proposals to establish interesting new models of service delivery that can potentially deliver the three-part aim of better health, better health care, and finally, lower costs through the improved quality of Medicare, Medicaid, and Children's Health Insurance Program.

---