The Harvard Medical School’s “Portugal Program” awards grants to help deliver and assess the impact that the availability of health information has on the people of Portugal. The Harvard Medical School is working with the Portuguese Ministry of Science and Technology to produce educational material for the general public concerning health, medicine, and biomedical sciences, as well as produce information for students and professionals in the field.
For example, one of the grants will help Portugal deal with chronic diseases of the airway. There is a need to provide health information to patients, the general public, physicians, and health students on this topic in order to share decision-making and self management for these chronic diseases.
Actions have been taken to further address the problem. Internationally, The World Health Organization recognizing the impact that chronic respiratory diseases have on populations, created the “Global Alliance against Chronic Respiratory Diseases”. Also, Portugal very concerned about this issue, has instituted a “National Program for Asthma Control” and also a program for the “Prevention and Control of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases”.
Grant funding supports the Portugal research team that is working on chronic respiratory diseases. The researchers have backgrounds in allergy and asthma, pulmonary medicine, psychiatry, and primary care medicine, and expertise in patient education, behavioral change, ehealth, production of online health contents, patient-centered care, and training of health professionals.
This specific project led by Joao Almeida Lopes Fonseca, will develop the content and tools needed to develop a web platform that will cover several aspects of the chronic disease. The objective is to create different versions of the web platform for physicians, students, patients, the public, and for audiences with limited literacy.
The research team is working to develop the tools needed to promote shared medical decisions and to support disease assessments and monitoring. Standard web 2.0 technologies will be applied to enable users to be both consumers and producers of health information.
Grants will also be awarded to help in other areas of concern in Portugal. Research will be undertaken to develop effective ways to deliver health information on hereditary breast and colorectal cancer, address childhood obesity, evaluate the state of public knowledge on health and health information in Portugal, and study information that is available on how the population perceives quality and accessibility to health information sources in the country.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Events Driving Health IT
As a result of ARRA and the passage of healthcare reform legislation that will help deal with emerging reimbursement models and shifting consumer health trends, events are driving radical changes in the nation’s healthcare system and bringing about the convergence of telehealth, electronic health records, and health information exchanges.
This topic is the focus of the white paper “The Crossroads of Telehealth, Electronic Health Records & Health Information Exchange: Planning for Rural Communities” just published by the Northwest Regional Telehealth Resource Center (NRTRC). NRTC is one of five TRCs in the nation and leverages the collective expertise of 33 telehealth networks across Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming, and United States affiliated Pacific Islands to share resources to assist in developing new telehealth programs.
“Accelerating adoption and utilization of telehealth technologies, telemedicine in particular will be critical to a successful stakeholder response to the disruptive changes now underway in healthcare”, said NRTC Executive Director, Christina B Thielst. “By leveraging telehealth networks and their existing infrastructures, Regional Extension Centers, HIEs, and other data-sharing initiatives will be better positioned to fulfill their commitments to the healthcare delivery system of the future—a system in which even the most rural and remote populations have timely access to care and their health records.”
The white paper explores emerging trends and recent disruptors impacting the healthcare delivery system and examines the opportunities they present for the advancement of telecommunications-based health solutions and the broadband infrastructure available through telehealth networks. The paper takes an in-depth look at the various uses of telehealth and the most common delivery models of telemedicine, as well as the role of the telehealth network and Telehealth Resource Centers (TRC) in the communities.
Finally, the white paper highlights the evolution of the REACH Montana Telehealth Network using teleradiology at just three remote sites now provides services to a consortium of healthcare providers at 18 sites linked by high-bandwidth telecommunications in the north central region of Montana. REACH, considers the HIE to be a primary function, and is currently working to leverage its existing T1 infrastructure to create “railroad tracks” to carry medical data and information within the region and beyond.
“This white paper is an excellent analysis of the intersection of telehealth and health IT and the opportunities and challenges electronic technology will bring to rural America”, said Terry J. Hill, Executive Director for the Rural Health Resource Center, the Duluth, Minnesota-based national knowledge center for rural hospitals.”
For more information, contact Christina Thielst by email at thielsc@nrtrc.org or call (805) 845-2450, or go to www.nrtrc.org to download the white paper.
This topic is the focus of the white paper “The Crossroads of Telehealth, Electronic Health Records & Health Information Exchange: Planning for Rural Communities” just published by the Northwest Regional Telehealth Resource Center (NRTRC). NRTC is one of five TRCs in the nation and leverages the collective expertise of 33 telehealth networks across Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming, and United States affiliated Pacific Islands to share resources to assist in developing new telehealth programs.
“Accelerating adoption and utilization of telehealth technologies, telemedicine in particular will be critical to a successful stakeholder response to the disruptive changes now underway in healthcare”, said NRTC Executive Director, Christina B Thielst. “By leveraging telehealth networks and their existing infrastructures, Regional Extension Centers, HIEs, and other data-sharing initiatives will be better positioned to fulfill their commitments to the healthcare delivery system of the future—a system in which even the most rural and remote populations have timely access to care and their health records.”
The white paper explores emerging trends and recent disruptors impacting the healthcare delivery system and examines the opportunities they present for the advancement of telecommunications-based health solutions and the broadband infrastructure available through telehealth networks. The paper takes an in-depth look at the various uses of telehealth and the most common delivery models of telemedicine, as well as the role of the telehealth network and Telehealth Resource Centers (TRC) in the communities.
Finally, the white paper highlights the evolution of the REACH Montana Telehealth Network using teleradiology at just three remote sites now provides services to a consortium of healthcare providers at 18 sites linked by high-bandwidth telecommunications in the north central region of Montana. REACH, considers the HIE to be a primary function, and is currently working to leverage its existing T1 infrastructure to create “railroad tracks” to carry medical data and information within the region and beyond.
“This white paper is an excellent analysis of the intersection of telehealth and health IT and the opportunities and challenges electronic technology will bring to rural America”, said Terry J. Hill, Executive Director for the Rural Health Resource Center, the Duluth, Minnesota-based national knowledge center for rural hospitals.”
For more information, contact Christina Thielst by email at thielsc@nrtrc.org or call (805) 845-2450, or go to www.nrtrc.org to download the white paper.
IHIE Receives $16 Million
The Indiana Health Information Exchange received $16 million of the $220 million awarded by HHS on May 4th through the Beacon Community Program to help communities at the cutting edge of electronic health record adoption attain a new level of healthcare quality and efficiency. The IHIE was one of 15 groups from over 130 applications throughout the country to receive an award.
The funding will enable the expansion of the country’s largest HIE to new community providers. This will help improve cholesterol and blood sugar control for diabetic patients and reduce preventable re-admissions by using telemonitoring for high risk chronic disease patients after they are discharged from the hospital. The plan is to help treat chronic diseases across 41 counties comprising 45 percent of the Indiana population base.
According to J. Marc Overhage, M.D. PhD, and President and CEO of the IHIE, said “We already are working with over 14,000 physicians and over 70 healthcare organizations, including 60 hospitals, and stakeholders to accelerate and demonstrate the feasibility and value of HIEs.”
The Indiana Beacon Community’s 36 month program will be conducted with three main activities:
• Currently, the exchange securely captures a rich set of clinical data, but patient information from physician practices has been difficult to capture. This information includes vital signs and point-of-care testing such as cholesterol levels that are “siloed” in physician offices. This funding agreement will enable this data to be included.
• IHIE will be able to broaden its Quality Health First Program by adding new disease and wellness measures and functionality while broadening provider participation to address efficiency, quality, and public health
• IHIE will work with providers and Indian’s federally funded HIT Regional Extension Centers and focus on rural physicians. Help will be provided to devise and implement electronic health record adoption and meaningful use in at least 60 percent of the primary care providers in the Indiana Beacon Community area
The goal in the state is to reduce preventable hospital admission and emergency department visits related to ambulatory care by 3 percent, reduce the number of ambulatory care re-admissions by 10 percent, reduce the number of redundant radiologic studies by 10 percent, increase the number of patients screened for colorectal and cervical cancer by 5 percent, increase the data for adult immunizations by 5 percent, improve the number of patients who are diabetic and have the condition under control by 10 percent, and improve the number of diabetic patients that have their cholesterol under control by 10 percent.
IHIE plans to work with other community partners, like Purdue’s Indiana Healthcare Information Technology Extension Center $12 million in ARRA funds to help healthcare providers adopt and use health IT.
In addition, the leaders of the IHIE think that the existing $10.3 million grant made to the state of Indiana from ARRA’s State Health Information Exchange Cooperative Agreement Program can be leveraged in new ways to improve health outcomes in the state and reduce costs across the continuum of healthcare.
The funding will enable the expansion of the country’s largest HIE to new community providers. This will help improve cholesterol and blood sugar control for diabetic patients and reduce preventable re-admissions by using telemonitoring for high risk chronic disease patients after they are discharged from the hospital. The plan is to help treat chronic diseases across 41 counties comprising 45 percent of the Indiana population base.
According to J. Marc Overhage, M.D. PhD, and President and CEO of the IHIE, said “We already are working with over 14,000 physicians and over 70 healthcare organizations, including 60 hospitals, and stakeholders to accelerate and demonstrate the feasibility and value of HIEs.”
The Indiana Beacon Community’s 36 month program will be conducted with three main activities:
• Currently, the exchange securely captures a rich set of clinical data, but patient information from physician practices has been difficult to capture. This information includes vital signs and point-of-care testing such as cholesterol levels that are “siloed” in physician offices. This funding agreement will enable this data to be included.
• IHIE will be able to broaden its Quality Health First Program by adding new disease and wellness measures and functionality while broadening provider participation to address efficiency, quality, and public health
• IHIE will work with providers and Indian’s federally funded HIT Regional Extension Centers and focus on rural physicians. Help will be provided to devise and implement electronic health record adoption and meaningful use in at least 60 percent of the primary care providers in the Indiana Beacon Community area
The goal in the state is to reduce preventable hospital admission and emergency department visits related to ambulatory care by 3 percent, reduce the number of ambulatory care re-admissions by 10 percent, reduce the number of redundant radiologic studies by 10 percent, increase the number of patients screened for colorectal and cervical cancer by 5 percent, increase the data for adult immunizations by 5 percent, improve the number of patients who are diabetic and have the condition under control by 10 percent, and improve the number of diabetic patients that have their cholesterol under control by 10 percent.
IHIE plans to work with other community partners, like Purdue’s Indiana Healthcare Information Technology Extension Center $12 million in ARRA funds to help healthcare providers adopt and use health IT.
In addition, the leaders of the IHIE think that the existing $10.3 million grant made to the state of Indiana from ARRA’s State Health Information Exchange Cooperative Agreement Program can be leveraged in new ways to improve health outcomes in the state and reduce costs across the continuum of healthcare.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Telehealth Grants Available
HRSA’s Office of Rural Health Policy and the Office for the Advancement of Telehealth (OAT) announced that funding for the Telehealth Network Grant Program (TNGP) and the Telehealth Resource Center Grant Program (TRCGP) are now available. The TNGP will provide $2,000,000 to be available annually to fund up to eight grantees for fiscal years 2010-2012.
The primary objective of the TNGP is to demonstrate how telehealth programs and networks can improve access to quality healthcare services in underserved rural and urban communities. Applicants can apply for the TNGP in one of two areas. The grants for the Telehealth Networks involves the use of electronic information and telecommunications technologies to support and promote long distance clinical healthcare, patient and professional health related education, public health, and health administration.
In addition, the Telehomecare Network grants will be awarded to evaluate the cost and effectiveness of remote vital sign monitoring of individual patients to deliver healthcare services to the home by a healthcare provider using telecommunications technologies.
For fiscal year 2010, funding will be available for telehealth projects that comprise mixed networks to provide services to both urban underserved areas, as well as rural areas. These projects may include some urban as well as rural Telehealth Network Partner spoke sites that receive telehealth services.
The TNGP seeks to fund nonprofit organizations with a demonstrable successful track record in implementing telehealth, and with knowledge on how to expand services to new communities and/or populations. OAT is looking to fund projects that will effectively integrate administrative and clinical information systems with the proposed telehealth system and integrate the system into each provider’s normal healthcare practice. The funds are to be used to fund network expansion and/or increase services provided by existing successful telehealth networks.
The deadline for TNGP (HRSA-10-213) applications is June 14, 2010. The program contact for TNGP is Carlos Mena with OAT and he can be reached at (301) 443-3198 or by email at cmena@hrsa.hhs.gov.
The Telehealth Resource Center Grant Program (TRCGP) announcement also released on May 5th has funding for $975,000 to include three awards. The purpose of TRCGP is to establish and develop Telehealth Resource Centers (TRC). These centers are to provide technical assistance to healthcare organization, healthcare networks, and healthcare providers to help implement cost effective telehealth programs to serve rural and medically underserved areas and populations.
This cycle of grant funding will support up to nine centers to serve as focal points to advance the effective use of telehealth technologies in their respective communities and regions for clinical care. The funds will support six regional TRCs, two Telehomecare TRCs, and one National Telehealth Resource Center.
The deadline for TRCGP applications is June 15th, 2010. The program contact for TRCGP is Monica M. Cowan, with OAT, and she can be reached at (301) 443-0076 or by email at monica.cowan@hrsa.hhs.gov.
For more details on both announcements, go to http://www.grants.gov/.
The primary objective of the TNGP is to demonstrate how telehealth programs and networks can improve access to quality healthcare services in underserved rural and urban communities. Applicants can apply for the TNGP in one of two areas. The grants for the Telehealth Networks involves the use of electronic information and telecommunications technologies to support and promote long distance clinical healthcare, patient and professional health related education, public health, and health administration.
In addition, the Telehomecare Network grants will be awarded to evaluate the cost and effectiveness of remote vital sign monitoring of individual patients to deliver healthcare services to the home by a healthcare provider using telecommunications technologies.
For fiscal year 2010, funding will be available for telehealth projects that comprise mixed networks to provide services to both urban underserved areas, as well as rural areas. These projects may include some urban as well as rural Telehealth Network Partner spoke sites that receive telehealth services.
The TNGP seeks to fund nonprofit organizations with a demonstrable successful track record in implementing telehealth, and with knowledge on how to expand services to new communities and/or populations. OAT is looking to fund projects that will effectively integrate administrative and clinical information systems with the proposed telehealth system and integrate the system into each provider’s normal healthcare practice. The funds are to be used to fund network expansion and/or increase services provided by existing successful telehealth networks.
The deadline for TNGP (HRSA-10-213) applications is June 14, 2010. The program contact for TNGP is Carlos Mena with OAT and he can be reached at (301) 443-3198 or by email at cmena@hrsa.hhs.gov.
The Telehealth Resource Center Grant Program (TRCGP) announcement also released on May 5th has funding for $975,000 to include three awards. The purpose of TRCGP is to establish and develop Telehealth Resource Centers (TRC). These centers are to provide technical assistance to healthcare organization, healthcare networks, and healthcare providers to help implement cost effective telehealth programs to serve rural and medically underserved areas and populations.
This cycle of grant funding will support up to nine centers to serve as focal points to advance the effective use of telehealth technologies in their respective communities and regions for clinical care. The funds will support six regional TRCs, two Telehomecare TRCs, and one National Telehealth Resource Center.
The deadline for TRCGP applications is June 15th, 2010. The program contact for TRCGP is Monica M. Cowan, with OAT, and she can be reached at (301) 443-0076 or by email at monica.cowan@hrsa.hhs.gov.
For more details on both announcements, go to http://www.grants.gov/.
Reinventing Primary Care
Primary Care is in crisis mode and as a result bold changes are needed to help the U.S. deliver and pay for primary care, according to the authors published in the May issue of “Health Affairs”. The thematic May issue discusses the primary care crisis, innovative models needed for reform, expanding the role of other health professions, and information on promising healthcare provider practices.
“The horribly broken primary care system that we now have is plagued by underinvestment and misaligned incentives,” according to Health Affairs editor-in-chief Susan Dentzer. She continued to say “primary care is stuck in a bygone era but health reform offers the opportunity to reinvent primary care and rapidly move it into the 21st century.”
To bring these ideas together on reinventing primary care, a briefing was held on May 4th at the National Press Club hosted by Health Affairs, to discuss the variety of thoughts and ideas presented by a number of key experts.
Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary HHS, said “This is a historical moment in the transformation of the healthcare system as we are remaking and rebuilding the American healthcare system. Stronger steps are needed to support the need for primary care.
The Secretary discussed the strategic moves needed to address the problem. These include providing for incentives and coming up with new initiatives to increase and attract the workforce to the primary care field, find ways to expand the community health center program, develop the framework needed to address reimbursement issues, examine ways for collaborative care to work such as in medical homes, invest in health IT, and upgrade prevention and wellness programs.
To discuss how medical homes can play a part in supporting primary care, Paul Grundy, Director of Healthcare Technology and Strategic Initiatives, IBM Global Wellbeing Services and Health Benefits at IBM, pointed out that the patient centered medical home can really drive change.
Grundy has visited a few communities with ongoing medical homes and sees the profound impact that it can have on the community. For example, since using the medical home concept in Shelby County area in Iowa, there has been a 47 percent reduction in hospitalizations, 32 percent reduction in emergency room use, 43 percent reduction in cost overall, and a 20 percent reduction in costs for CMS. Also, in Calhoun County Area in Michigan there has been a 49.7 percent reduction in hospitalizations, reductions in costs, and the patients and the physicians have expressed improved satisfaction with the program.
He continued to say “In order for the medical home model to take effect, financial incentives have to change, quality and safety need to be the hallmark of the medical home, and resources have to be made available with support to drive the transformation of care.”
In addition, “Coordination is key and has to be integrated across all elements of the complex healthcare community. Coordination is enabled by registries, establishing new communication paths between patients, personal physicians, and the staff, plus information technology and health information exchanges must be in place.”
Troy Brennan, Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of CVS Caremark Corporation said, “Another new concept that helps to drive primary care is the Minute Clinic Model which enables people to have on-demand access to basic primary care and at their convenience. Minute Clinics provides services and increased access, but at the same time, helps patients re-engage with traditional care and can be an asset to further support the medical home.
A paper appeared in the May issue of Health Affairs authored by Daniel Fields, a law student at Harvard, Elizabeth Leshen a biological engineering student at MIT, and Kavita Patel, a former Director of Policy for the Office of Public Engagement at the White House that discusses driving quality and cost savings through the adoption of medical homes.
The paper discusses seven medical home model pilots and summarizes the outcomes. The pilots included in the study included the Colorado Medical Homes for Children, Community Care of North Carolina, Geisinger Health System, Group Health Cooperative in the Pacific Northwest, Intermountain Health Care, North Dakota, and Vermont’s Blueprint for Health. The pilots showed significant improvements, hospitalization reductions, emergency department visits reduced, and per-patient savings.
According to Dr. Patel, speaking at the briefing, “There is much work to do. It is important to determine if all the features in the model home model are essential and which features can vary. It is important to master the complexity of scalable implementation, be able to aggregate program data to learn from mistakes and successes, consider systematic reforms, and determine exactly what is needed to develop the primary care pipeline.”
For more information, go to www.healthaffairs.org.
“The horribly broken primary care system that we now have is plagued by underinvestment and misaligned incentives,” according to Health Affairs editor-in-chief Susan Dentzer. She continued to say “primary care is stuck in a bygone era but health reform offers the opportunity to reinvent primary care and rapidly move it into the 21st century.”
To bring these ideas together on reinventing primary care, a briefing was held on May 4th at the National Press Club hosted by Health Affairs, to discuss the variety of thoughts and ideas presented by a number of key experts.
Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary HHS, said “This is a historical moment in the transformation of the healthcare system as we are remaking and rebuilding the American healthcare system. Stronger steps are needed to support the need for primary care.
The Secretary discussed the strategic moves needed to address the problem. These include providing for incentives and coming up with new initiatives to increase and attract the workforce to the primary care field, find ways to expand the community health center program, develop the framework needed to address reimbursement issues, examine ways for collaborative care to work such as in medical homes, invest in health IT, and upgrade prevention and wellness programs.
To discuss how medical homes can play a part in supporting primary care, Paul Grundy, Director of Healthcare Technology and Strategic Initiatives, IBM Global Wellbeing Services and Health Benefits at IBM, pointed out that the patient centered medical home can really drive change.
Grundy has visited a few communities with ongoing medical homes and sees the profound impact that it can have on the community. For example, since using the medical home concept in Shelby County area in Iowa, there has been a 47 percent reduction in hospitalizations, 32 percent reduction in emergency room use, 43 percent reduction in cost overall, and a 20 percent reduction in costs for CMS. Also, in Calhoun County Area in Michigan there has been a 49.7 percent reduction in hospitalizations, reductions in costs, and the patients and the physicians have expressed improved satisfaction with the program.
He continued to say “In order for the medical home model to take effect, financial incentives have to change, quality and safety need to be the hallmark of the medical home, and resources have to be made available with support to drive the transformation of care.”
In addition, “Coordination is key and has to be integrated across all elements of the complex healthcare community. Coordination is enabled by registries, establishing new communication paths between patients, personal physicians, and the staff, plus information technology and health information exchanges must be in place.”
Troy Brennan, Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of CVS Caremark Corporation said, “Another new concept that helps to drive primary care is the Minute Clinic Model which enables people to have on-demand access to basic primary care and at their convenience. Minute Clinics provides services and increased access, but at the same time, helps patients re-engage with traditional care and can be an asset to further support the medical home.
A paper appeared in the May issue of Health Affairs authored by Daniel Fields, a law student at Harvard, Elizabeth Leshen a biological engineering student at MIT, and Kavita Patel, a former Director of Policy for the Office of Public Engagement at the White House that discusses driving quality and cost savings through the adoption of medical homes.
The paper discusses seven medical home model pilots and summarizes the outcomes. The pilots included in the study included the Colorado Medical Homes for Children, Community Care of North Carolina, Geisinger Health System, Group Health Cooperative in the Pacific Northwest, Intermountain Health Care, North Dakota, and Vermont’s Blueprint for Health. The pilots showed significant improvements, hospitalization reductions, emergency department visits reduced, and per-patient savings.
According to Dr. Patel, speaking at the briefing, “There is much work to do. It is important to determine if all the features in the model home model are essential and which features can vary. It is important to master the complexity of scalable implementation, be able to aggregate program data to learn from mistakes and successes, consider systematic reforms, and determine exactly what is needed to develop the primary care pipeline.”
For more information, go to www.healthaffairs.org.
Disability Center Established
The HHS Office on Disability awarded over $6 million under ARRA to establish a Center of Excellence in Research on Disability Services, Care Coordination, and Integration. The contract was awarded to Mathematica Policy Research Inc. for a two year period and will help build the infrastructure necessary to support and conduct research on the effectiveness and comparative effectiveness of systems caring for people with disabilities.
“The data collected will enable the Office on Disability and CMS to examine the effectiveness of different services being provided, and in turn, will improve care for people with disabilities,” said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
The Center will identify data sources, evaluate the usability of data, conduct research, and disseminate scientifically and clinically relevant information to help patients, providers, policy makers, consumers, caregivers, and family members make decisions on healthcare.
The key component of this effort is to collaborate with CMS and their Chronic Conditions Warehouse (CCW). “By linking existing Medicaid data sources and other datasets relevant to disability to the CCW, the Center will be able to increase the use of CCW information to do research on people with disabilities and/or chronic conditions,” said Rosaly Correa-de-Araujo, M.D. PhD, Deputy Director of the Office on Disability and the technical and scientific lead for the initiative.
In addition, Medicaid data with information on state plans and waiver services to be supplied by specific states will be assessed and used to identify and propose ways to achieve greater consistency on how services are used and defined.
“The data collected will enable the Office on Disability and CMS to examine the effectiveness of different services being provided, and in turn, will improve care for people with disabilities,” said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
The Center will identify data sources, evaluate the usability of data, conduct research, and disseminate scientifically and clinically relevant information to help patients, providers, policy makers, consumers, caregivers, and family members make decisions on healthcare.
The key component of this effort is to collaborate with CMS and their Chronic Conditions Warehouse (CCW). “By linking existing Medicaid data sources and other datasets relevant to disability to the CCW, the Center will be able to increase the use of CCW information to do research on people with disabilities and/or chronic conditions,” said Rosaly Correa-de-Araujo, M.D. PhD, Deputy Director of the Office on Disability and the technical and scientific lead for the initiative.
In addition, Medicaid data with information on state plans and waiver services to be supplied by specific states will be assessed and used to identify and propose ways to achieve greater consistency on how services are used and defined.
Tools to Correct Brain Activity
Many neurological and psychiatric disorders are associated with abnormal activity in specific brain circuits. So far, approaches to correct abnormalities in brain circuits have relied on the use of electrical or magnetic stimulation which only relieves the symptoms partially or for a short period of time.
However, researchers in one of NIH Common Fund’s New Innovator program, has engineered a powerful new class of tools to shut down nerve activity for short periods of time using different colors of light. The development of these new technologies would allow the precise control of neural circuits which could lead to new treatments for disorders associated with abnormal brain activity, including chronic pain, epilepsy, brain injury, and Parkinson’s disease.
These techniques are based on genes recovered from bacteria and fungi that encode light activated proteins normally used for energy production in these organisms. These nerve cells expressing proteins are exposed to the appropriate wavelength of light and then are prevented from transmitting electrical signals. When used in combination with genetic techniques to target these proteins to specific brain regions or cell subsets, these tools can lead to a much deeper understanding of the brain’s role in health and disease.
The NIH Common Fund Program supports seven research programs plus research across NIH institutes and centers in order to accomplish work that no single institute or center could do alone. The research programs will distribute $17.8 million for Fiscal year 2010 and additional funds in future years.
For more information, go to http://commonfund.nih.gov.
However, researchers in one of NIH Common Fund’s New Innovator program, has engineered a powerful new class of tools to shut down nerve activity for short periods of time using different colors of light. The development of these new technologies would allow the precise control of neural circuits which could lead to new treatments for disorders associated with abnormal brain activity, including chronic pain, epilepsy, brain injury, and Parkinson’s disease.
These techniques are based on genes recovered from bacteria and fungi that encode light activated proteins normally used for energy production in these organisms. These nerve cells expressing proteins are exposed to the appropriate wavelength of light and then are prevented from transmitting electrical signals. When used in combination with genetic techniques to target these proteins to specific brain regions or cell subsets, these tools can lead to a much deeper understanding of the brain’s role in health and disease.
The NIH Common Fund Program supports seven research programs plus research across NIH institutes and centers in order to accomplish work that no single institute or center could do alone. The research programs will distribute $17.8 million for Fiscal year 2010 and additional funds in future years.
For more information, go to http://commonfund.nih.gov.
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