Overview
The Everyday Technologies for Alzheimer Care (ETAC) consortium is a jointly planned program of research support sponsored by the Alzheimer’s Association and Intel Corporation. We are actively seeking other corporate and foundation partners to grow the ETAC consortium.
ETAC is seeking proposals on personalized diagnostics, preventive tools and interventions for adults coping with the spectrum of cognitive aging and neurodegenerative disease, particularly Alzheimer’s disease.
We are interested in groundbreaking studies on emerging information and communication technologies (ICTs) as well as their clinical and social implications. Mobile computing, high bandwidth sensing, robotics, imaging, face recognition, natural language processing, statistical modeling and a host of other technology advances allow unprecedented opportunities to study disease progression and therapeutic strategies in the contexts of everyday life.
ETAC supports research that integrates such emerging technology capabilities with leading directions in behavioral science and biomedical research. Grants that merely create internet-based versions of existing paper tools or services will not be considered.
Research topics
The following list of research topics is not exhaustive; we invite researcher-initiated programs in any of these or other topic areas.
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Behavioral Biomarkers for Early Detection: What kinds of behavioral data can be captured through everyday devices that are ripe for the early detection of Alzheimer’s? Are there key speech/conversational features that today’s or tomorrow’s cell phones could help to analyze for early detection? Are there gait and other movement patterns that home camera systems could capture to provide early warnings of potential cognitive conditions? How might different forms of dementia be differentiated by the analysis of such video and audio data? How can data from sensors, imaging and traditional clinical measures be triangulated to enhance assessment?
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Prevention: How can technologies foster the cognitive resilience and reserve that may protect against dementia? How can innovative systems provide the cognitive, social and physical engagement (throughout the lifespan) that may prevent or delay Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders? How can such systems motivate lifestyle changes and help people manage health conditions in order to limit vulnerability to dementia.
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Safety Monitoring and Support for Caregivers: How can new technologies augment and improve upon existing safety monitoring systems? What acoustic and visual cues can be relied upon to help identify and triage patients’ needs? For example, how can advances in high bandwidth sensing and statistical inferencing help detect and prevent falls?
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Supporting Independent Function in Daily Life: Early stage products based on wireless sensor networks have been developed to support about activities of daily living – how can additional processing capabilities improve upon these systems? What analytic tools could identify changes in individuals’ typical patterns and provide customized assistance?
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Social Support Through Face or Audio Recognition: How might speech, face and voice recognition technologies provide Alzheimer patients with real-time, just-in-time feedback, reminders and support for their social interactions? Can these technologies help someone with memory loss to keep track of past conversations, topics and social encounters in a way that does not require great effort or technological expertise? How can mobile technologies (phones, hearing aids, watches, etc.) serve as social assistants?
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Detecting Moments and Patterns of Lucidity: Given the sometimes weekly, daily or even hourly variability of function of many people with Alzheimer’s, how can we identify the optimal times for a patient to conduct complex household tasks like bill paying or self-medication? How can technologies help to find opportune moments for interacting with someone with Alzheimer’s?
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Privacy and Security Concerns of Alzheimer’s Families: What are the privacy and security concerns that families and patients with Alzheimer’s have regarding home monitoring? How do these concerns differ according to generational, regional, gender and other differences? How can technology help people negotiate the sharing of health related information?
Applicants are strongly encouraged to consider partnerships with chapters of the Alzheimer’s Association when it is advantageous to the goals of the project.
Past Awarded Proposals
Background research from Intel Corporation
The following paper from Intel Corporation presents preliminary findings of Intel’s Proactive Health research. The authors report on identified needs of cognitively impaired individuals and their caregivers that may be addressed through home computing technologies.
Ubiquitous Computing for Cognitive Decline: Findings from Intel’s Proactive Health Research
Funding and award period
The Association anticipates funding 4 awards under this program. Each total award is limited to $200,000 (direct and indirect) for up to three years. Requests in any given year may not exceed $90,000 (direct and indirect). Indirect costs are capped at 10 percent (rent for laboratory/office space is expected to be covered by indirect costs paid to the institution).
Eligibility
Researchers with full-time staff or faculty appointments are encouraged to apply. ETAC applications from post-doctoral candidates will not be accepted.
Ineligibility: The Alzheimer's Association will not accept new research grant applications from currently funded Alzheimer's disease investigators, who are delinquent in submitting interim/final scientific or interim/final financial reports on active grants. Post-doctoral fellows are ineligible to apply. This policy will be strictly adhered to with no exceptions.
Postdoctoral fellows are not eligible to apply for an ETAC grant.
Receipt of application deadline and award dates
Letters of intent must be received by the close of business, 5:00 p.m., Eastern Standard Time, December 1, 2007. Letters of intent will not be accepted after this date. No exceptions will be made.
To be considered under this research grant program, applications must be received by the close of business, 5:00 p.m., Eastern Standard Time, January 4, 2008. Scientific and technical review will be conducted February through May 2008.
The second-level review by the ETAC Review Board and Medical and Scientific Advisory Council will be conducted during June 2008. We anticipate funding four ETAC awards by July 2008.
Mechanism of award, reporting requirements and allowable costs
The mechanism of the award is the individual research grant. The maximum allowable duration is three years. Annual progress and financial reports are required. Continuation of the grant over the awarded duration is contingent upon the timely receipt of scientific and financial reports.
Budget: A “budget summary” for the proposed research project is required and must be submitted with the application and within the allowable page limits. However, if the application is to be awarded, a more detailed budget will be required and must be approved prior to the disbursement of funds.
Allowable costs under this award:
- It is required that most of the funds awarded under this program be used for direct research support.
Other allowable costs include:
- small pieces of laboratory equipment and laboratory supplies
- salary for the principal investigator, scientific (including postdoctoral fellows) and technical staff (including laboratory technicians and administrative support related directly to the funded project)
- purchase and care of laboratory animals
- purchase of a computer
Costs not allowed under this award include:
- Travel to scientific and professional meetings usually attended by the investigator(s)
- Tuition
- Rent for laboratory/office space
- Construction or renovation costs
Multiple and overlapping submissions
If separate proposals are submitted to different grant competitions, each proposal submitted must be distinctly different. Only one proposal will be funded if scores for multiple submissions fall within funding range of different grant categories.
Applicants cannot submit two proposals in the ETAC grant competition – even if the proposals are distinctly different.
Active ETAC or Consortium Funding Recipients: Overlapping funding of more than one Alzheimer’s Association grant is not allowed. Investigators who have an active Alzheimer's Association or Intel grant may apply for another award in the last year of their grant if that last year concludes by the time the new funding year begins on July 1.
Contact
For additional information, you may contact grantsapp@alz.org or call 312.335.5747.
