Pilot Core (Aging Focus): Technology Development and Refinement
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Stakeholder engagement is key to patient-centered care. It is particularly relevant to this proposal since stakeholder engagement can help ensure accountability and equity and avoid unintended consequences as we develop and integrate novel technology to improve the care and health of older adults. Stakeholder engagement is also relevant since many of the decisions older adults, especially those with dementia, face are preference-sensitive and inherently dependent on the patient perspective. The goal of Stakeholder Engagement Core for the AITC is to assemble and elicit input from a diverse set of stakeholders to inform all phases of the AITC project. Stakeholders include older adults, caregivers, clinicians, other health professionals, researchers, health system leaders, health informatics experts, technology develops, investors, and policymakers. We will use multiple synergistic and rigorous methods to engage with these diverse categories of stakeholders. In Aim 1, we will establish a Stakeholder Engagement Council comprising of 10-12 older adults, caregivers, clinicians and health professionals who are the most direct end-users of the products that the AITC aims to develop. The Stakeholder Engagement Council will provide ongoing input throughout the AITC project period including needs assessment, feedback during prototype development and feasibility testing, development of pilot grant solicitations and review of pilot grant proposals, support for pilot projects' stakeholder engagement efforts, input to networking and dissemination activities, and input to the design, content, and conduct of Aim 2's phase-specific, more targeted stakeholder engagement activities. Aim 2 includes more focused stakeholder engagement activities tailored to the different phrases of the AITC project. Specifically we will use environmental scan and needs assessment to identify technology needs, to use various feedback elicitation sessions (focus groups, interviews, questionnaires) to elicit input on feasibility and acceptability of products during technology development and testing. Lastly, we will organize a variety of forums including community workshops, town hall demonstrations and leverage national conferences to help disseminate the developed technology to community members, researchers, and technology developers/investors. Aim 3 focuses on the AITC goal of being a national resource and will establish infrastructure, support, and training for pilot grantees to engage stakeholder in their own projects. This Core includes a multi-disciplinary team with extensive experience in stakeholder engagement. We will work cohesively with the other AITC Cores to elicit and integrate important stakeholder perspectives to inform all key activities of the AITC.
The goal of Pilot Core for Aging (PCB) is to utilize a multidisciplinary collaborative approach to identify, develop, refine, and disseminate promising technologies that have high potential to improve the health and wellbeing of older Americans and/or their caregivers, with an emphasis on those that can mitigate current disparities in access and delivery of health care in rural and urban areas across the US. The aims of this core are to identify and fund innovative AI and machine learning-supported technologies that promise to improve the health and well-being of older without Alzheimer's Disease through an annual pilot award process, to ensure awarded pilot projects are well-designed, timely and rigorous, to assist in the further development and translation of completed pilot projects into products that will benefit older adults and/or their caregivers, and to expand the expertise and network of funded investigators focused on aging relevant AI technologies. Pilots will be solicited from investigators across the US, and developed, refined, and supported within a series of cores that will help to connect older adults stakeholders, tech and AI expertise, Geriatricians and Alzheimer's disease (AD) experts, clinical researchers, business and venture capital leaders, and rural and urban health experts. This core will be tightly integrated with the other cores in order to assure that the best ideas and technologies are identified, optimized, tested, and piloted by support from the entire AITC. Through close collaboration with the Networking and Mentoring Core and relevant consortia, pilot project ideas and results will be communicated to key stakeholders, decision-makers, and business leaders with potential to promote the development of products and move them to practice. Pilot investigators will be fully integrated into all activities as described in Technology Identification and Training Core (TITC) and Networking and Mentoring core (NMC) through all phases of research and will have access to technical, environmental, and scientific resources available in this AITC.
The overarching goal of this application is to build an Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Technology Collaboratory (AITC) ecosystem that will serve as a national resource to promote the development and implementation of novel AI and technology approaches to improve care and health outcomes for older Americans. The specific aims are: 1) To engage AI and geriatric/gerontology investigators from across the country and to identify, validate, test, and develop new AI and technologies relevant to improving the health and wellbeing of older adults through crucial pilot study mechanisms; 2) To serve as a national resource center that stimulates and leads the development and implementation of effective novel AI and technology approaches and products that will promote the health, wellbeing and independence of all older Americans; 3) To support the engagement of stakeholders in AI research; 4) To build an ecosystem of overlapping innovation and business, academic, and communities- of-practice networks ; and 5) To provide highest quality expertise, support, and infrastructure needed to disseminate technical and policy guidelines and best practices for effectively incorporating AI approaches and technology for older Americans, in partnership with private industry, angel investors, venture capital firms, and healthcare systems. This AITC is directed by a multi-PI interdisciplinary team led by two world-class experienced investigators who have long worked successfully in the fields of AI and technology development areas partnered with investigators who have long and successfully worked at the translational interface that connects real-world medical, cognitive, and functional declines that impact older adults with medical and technological solutions. Each of these investigators has a complementary skill set and a long track records of organizing transdisciplinary teams and consortiums of investigators around core themes. This interdisciplinary, accomplished, and highly visible leadership team will work together to develop vision for the next generation of AI in aging science and to build a scientifically and culturally diverse community of AI scholars and trainees around Aging. To achieve our goals, we designed the JHU AITC to have robust scientific and technological expertise that are described in eight core components. This infrastructure will support the implementation of stakeholder input and the identification of relevant technologies and investigators locally and nationally through a vetting and feasibility testing process of both technology and data processes. It will include a pilot testing phase and related oversight process. We have also established a key partnership with the Iowa office of Rural Health and Veterans Rural Health Resource Centers Leadership and with organizations within Johns Hopkins University that focus on improvements in the health and well-being of older adults in underserved urban communities. Connections with key academic, industry partners have also been established to accelerate the development of relevant technologies into products. This team is dedicated to developing the next AI scientific advances and disseminating resulting strategies into practice and policy that will maximize health, well-being, and independence for older adults.
