Massachusetts AI and Technology Center for Connected Care in Aging and Alzheimer's Disease Funds 11 Pilot Projects Totaling $2.3 Million

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The Massachusetts AI and Technology Center for Connected Care in Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease (MassAITC), housed at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, announced today its third round of grant funding, totaling $2.3 million, awarded to 11 pilot programs. The goal of the funding is to spur innovation at the intersection of AI, technology and aging with an emphasis on the home environment.

Launched in 2021 with a grant from the National Institute on Aging, MassAITC is a collaboration between the commonwealth’s premier institutions of education and health—including, in addition to UMass Amherst, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, Brandeis University and Northeastern University. It is led by Deepak Ganesan and Benjamin Marlin, both professors in UMass Amherst’s Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS), and Niteesh Choudhry, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and executive director of the Center for Healthcare Delivery Sciences at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

More than 90% of older Americans would prefer to stay in their homes as they age. However, the prevalence of chronic illness, including Alzheimer’s disease, can make that goal impossible without substantial support. Projects funded by the MassAITC pilot program, now in its third year, are already making great strides toward the goal of aging at home. Each team draws on interdisciplinary research that brings together the perspectives of patients, caregivers, clinicians, behavioral scientists and other stakeholders. These perspectives inform the work of teams whose expertise lies in wearable and contactless sensing, artificial intelligence and machine learning. 

The MassAITC pilot awards competition is driven by a broad mandate to leverage technology, including AI and machine learning, to address a range of challenges related to aging and Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (AD/ADRD). According to David Paquette, associate director of research, “The pilots represent a diverse cohort of academic and industry collaborators from across seven states and Puerto Rico.” Marlin adds, “Many of these pilot awardees are leveraging key resources across the MassAITC partner institutions; in particular, we are seeing an expansion of the use of Manning CICS Data Science Core to support the deployment of advanced machine learning algorithms.”

“We are excited to highlight increased focus amongst this cohort on developing technologies in partnership with underrepresented rural-dwelling older adults. This broad participation is a crucial step toward ensuring that the resulting products and algorithms developed will be equitable,” says Choudhry.

The selected Year 3 pilots include: 

Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias Focused Pilots

• Creating a Framework for Large Language Models for Caregiver Support in Dementia, Ipsit Vahia, Rachel Sava (McLean Hospital), Joseph Chung (Rippl Care)
• Chronic Pain Monitoring and Assessment for LTC Residents with ADRD by AI Sensing, Xian Du (UMass Amherst)
• An AI-powered Digital Therapy Assistant for Monitoring and Treating Cognitive Impairment, Jennifer Flexman (Moneta Health), Michael Busa (UMass Amherst)
• Towards an AI-based Care Plan for ADRD Caregiver-patient Dyads, G. Antonio Sosa-Pascual (REOFTech), Michael Busa (UMass Amherst)
• An Objective Assessment Tool for Evaluating Functioning in Older Adults, Ehsan Adeli (Stanford University) 
• An Equitable ML-based Music Intervention for At-risk Older Adults, Jennifer Myers (Musical Health Technologies) 
• A Digital Dyadic Coach to Promote Oral Health Self-Care in Older Adults, Inbal Billie Nahum-Shani (University of Michigan), Vivek Shetty (University of California, Irvine), Susan Murphy (Harvard University)

Healthy Aging Focused Pilots

• A Downloadable Oscillometric BP Monitor for All Smartphones with No Attachments, Edward Jay Wang (Billion Labs Inc.) 
• Protecting Patients Against Phishing Attacks Using AI-enabled Agents, Gang Wang (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Roopa Foulger (OSF HealthCare) 
• AI-Based Video App for At-Home Monitoring of Motor Functions in PD Patients, Hamed Tabkhi (ForesightCares Inc.), Sanjay Iyer (Memory & Movement Charlotte) 
• Accelerating Balance Recovery Using Adaptive EVS Therapy, John Ralston (Neursantys), VP Nguyen (UMass Amherst) 

A description of each pilot project can be found here.

MassAITC Pilots on the Move

• Edward Jay Wang (University of California, San Diego and principal investigator of a Year 1 pilot project) formed Billion Labs Inc. to develop and validate health monitoring solutions built on top of the sensors and computational capability of smartphones, transforming smartphones into the next billion medical devices. This new company is developing VibroBP, the world’s first blood pressure monitoring solution for a smartphone that requires no additional hardware attachments.   
• MindMics, a recipient of year 1 pilot funding, launched the first consumer version of their infrasonic earbuds and heart health app. The company was also accepted into the prestigious HeartX accelerator and its MindMics Heart Health System was a double CES Innovation Awards 2024 Honoree in the categories of Digital Health and Wearable Technologies.
• Kinto, led by CEO Joseph Chung and a recipient of year 2 pilot funding, completed a successful merger and acquisition with Rippl Care. Chung will lead the charge of further integration of cutting-edge generative AI into their systems as CTO and Head of AI at Rippl Care. 
• Neursantys, a recipient of year 3 pilot funding, recently won the AgeTech Collaborative from AARP’s AgeTech After Dark Pitch Challenge at the 2024 Longevity Venture Summit held in San Francisco.

MassAITC is a member of the a2 Collective—a program funded by the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health—that administers the annual a2 Pilot Awards for projects using AI and technology approaches to benefit older adults, including individuals with AD/ADRD, and their caregivers. The window for the upcoming fifth year of a2 Pilot Awards will be open from Dec. 2, 2024 – Jan. 15, 2025.

This story was originally published by the UMass Amherst Office of News & Media Relations