Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Healthy and Safe Aging (ERC-HSA)

工程研究中心的规划赠款竞争是作为ERC计划内的试点招标运行。 规划赠款不需要作为整个ERC竞赛的一部分，但旨在建立团队之间的能力，以规划收敛，中心规模的工程研究。在2016年至2050年期间，美国老年人（65岁）的数量将从4900万增长到8400万。不断增长的老龄化人口与日益复杂的护理需求相结合，对提供安全，有效和高效的医疗保健提出了重大的社会挑战。虽然老年人更喜欢呆在家里或熟悉的环境中，但他们也需要医疗服务，但在与医疗保健提供系统互动时，患者安全问题和医疗保健相关伤害的风险很高。我们需要开发能够帮助老年人更长时间保持健康和安全的技术：这包括支持老年人与医疗保健系统（例如急诊室，医院）的安全互动。我们计划开发一个健康和安全老龄化ERC（ERC-HSA），该ERC将吸引多个学科（工程，健康科学）和老年人及其护理人员，以开发老年人护理应用特定的智能传感技术，并将其整合到整体协调的老年人护理系统中。拟议的ERC-HSA将被整合到新成立的威斯康星州医疗保健系统工程研究所在威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校，并将受益于其他大学的研究人员的互补专业知识。在ERC规划阶段，我们将与各大学和当地团体合作，制定旨在提高我们未来学生的多样性和解决年龄歧视的战略和计划，即针对老年人的偏见。我们还将与大麦迪逊地区以及沿着？健康公路？ERC-HSA将围绕传感器技术、数据分析和系统设计方面的专业知识制定一个融合的研究议程，这些专业知识将与对老龄化护理的深入了解相结合，以开发有效解决健康和安全老龄化社会问题的技术。在战略规划，团队科学，多样性和老龄化专家的建议下，我们将协调各种活动，包括团队科学和团队研究的网络研讨会，有针对性的圆桌会议和行业研讨会。我们将组织圆桌会议，以开发创新的融合研究计划，并为来自不同背景的研究人员之间的对话创造机会。老年人及其护理人员和医疗保健专业人员将积极参与这些活动，因为我们建议不对老年人进行研究，而是与老年人一起并为老年人进行研究。我们将融合三个重点领域的专业知识：（1）以人为本的建模，模拟和设计患者工作和临床工作流程，（2）健康/医疗数据分析，以及（3）传感器和传感技术。我们的目标是超越设计孤立和分散的技术，促进创新的融合研究，为健康和安全的老龄化设计下一代技术。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The Planning Grants for Engineering Research Centers competition was run as a pilot solicitation within the ERC program. Planning grants are not required as part of the full ERC competition, but intended to build capacity among teams to plan for convergent, center-scale engineering research.Between 2016 and 2050, the number of older adults (age65) in the US will grow from 49 million to 84 million. The combination of the growing aging population with increasingly complex care needs presents a major societal challenge to deliver safe, effective and efficient health care. While older adults prefer to stay in their home or a familiar environment, they also require health services, but are at high risk for patient safety issues and healthcare-associated harm when interacting with the healthcare delivery system. We need to develop technologies that can help older adults stay healthy and safe longer: this includes supporting safe interactions of older adults with the healthcare system (e.g. emergency room, hospital). We plan to develop an ERC for Healthy and Safe Aging (ERC-HSA) that will engage multiple disciplines (engineering, health sciences) and older adults and their caregivers to develop older-care-application-specific smart sensing technologies and integrate them into the overall coordinated older adult care system. The proposed ERC-HSA will be integrated in the newly created Wisconsin Institute for Healthcare Systems Engineering at UW-Madison and will benefit from complementary expertise of researchers at other Universities. During the ERC planning stage, we will work with various universities and local groups to develop strategies and programs aimed at enhancing diversity of our future students and addressing ageism, i.e. biases targeted at older adults. We will also build stronger ties with the health technology industry in the Greater Madison area as well as along the ?Health Highway?, a 600-mile Midwestern stretch that spans four states and represents a growing healthcare ecosystem.The proposed ERC-HSA will develop a convergent research agenda organized around expertise in sensor technologies, data analytics and system design that will be combined with deep knowledge about aging care to develop technologies that effectively address the societal problem of healthy and safe aging. With advice of experts in strategic planning, team science, diversity and aging, we will coordinate various activities, including webinar on team science and team research, targeted roundtables and a workshop with industry. We will organize roundtables to develop the innovative convergent research program and create opportunities for conversations among researchers from various backgrounds. Older adults and their caregivers and healthcare professionals will actively participate in these activities as we propose to do research not on older adults, but with and for older adults. We will blend expertise in three thrust areas: (1) human-centered modeling, simulation and design of patient work and clinical workflow, (2) health/healthcare data analytics, and (3) sensors and sensing technologies. Our goal is to go beyond designing siloed and fragmented technologies and promote innovative convergent research that will design the next generation of technologies for healthy and safe aging.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.