Center for Innovation in Point of Care Technologies for the Future of Cancer Care

描述（由申请人提供）：将癌症治疗从专业中心转移到当地诊所或家庭护理可以显着降低医疗成本。通常，患者必须长途跋涉才能在癌症中心接受治疗。 在发展中国家的低资源环境中，可能根本没有任何癌症治疗的选择。手术治疗有感染的风险，在许多地方没有足够的外科医生来治疗所有需要的病人。像靶向超声和基于光的治疗这样的技术可以让培训较少的提供者以更少的钱治疗更多的患者。在治疗之间在家监测化疗患者的工具可以消除旅行和办公室访问。收集高危人群数据的移动的健康策略可能会导致新的干预措施，直接影响癌症筛查率。 为了解决这些问题，我们将成立一个综合中心，专注于识别，原型设计和早期临床评估创新的护理点技术，用于治疗，筛查，诊断和监测癌症。我们计划利用波士顿大学现有的基础设施，从临床需求、市场需求、设置适当性和商业化战略等方面评估早期技术。我们已经建立了一个综合的多学科团队，包括工程师，临床医生，公共卫生从业人员和技术转让专家。该团队将评估处于不同发展阶段的技术在一系列初级保健和非传统医疗保健环境中的适用性。此外，我们将通过将这些团体的代表纳入我们的外部咨询委员会以及培训和外展活动，来满足患者和患者倡导者的需求。该中心将包括一个行政核心，一个临床需求评估和影响分析核心，一个培训核心和一个原型开发和测试核心，分为两个部分，阿尔法和贝塔核心，这两个核心都将提供给中心项目，这取决于技术开发的阶段。

DESCRIPTION (Provided by the Applicant): Moving cancer treatments out of specialized centers and into local clinics or home care could significantly lower healthcare costs. Often patients have to travel large distances to receive treatments at cancer centers. In low resource settings in the developing world, there may not be any options at all for cancer treatment. Surgical treatments carry infection risks and in many places there are not enough surgeons to treat all of the patients in need. Technologies like targeted ultrasound and light based treatments could allow providers with less training to treat more patients for less money. Tools for monitoring chemotherapy patients at home between treatments could eliminate travel and office visits. Mobile health strategies for collecting data about high-risk populations could lead o new interventions to directly impact cancer screening rates. To address these issues, we will form an integrated Center focused on the identification, prototyping and early clinical assessment of innovative point of care technologies for the treatment, screening, diagnosis and monitoring of cancers. We plan to leverage the existing infrastructure at Boston University to assess early stage technologies in terms of clinical needs, market demands, setting appropriateness and commercialization strategies. We have built an integrated multidisciplinary team consisting of engineers, clinicians, public health practitioners, and technology transfer experts. This team will evaluate technologies in various stages of development for their suitability across a range of primary care and non-traditional healthcare settings. Further, we wil take under advisement the needs of patients and patient advocates by including representatives from these groups on our external advisory board and in training and outreach activities. The Center will comprise an Administrative Core, a Clinical Needs Assessment and Impact Analysis Core, a Training Core and a Prototype Development and Testing Core divided into two parts, the Alpha and Beta Cores, that will both be available to Center projects, depending on the stage of technology development.