Innovations & Pilots

The Spectrum Innovations & Pilots Program accelerates the translation of medical discoveries into better health through innovation training, mentorships and pilot funding of promising projects.

Major components of the Spectrum Innovations & Pilots program include:

BIODESIGN

Stanford Biodesign is a biomedical technology innovation program that assemble teams of medical, engineering and business students to develop solutions to address unmet medical needs. Key components of the program include Biodesign Innovation Fellowships, classes in medtech innovation, mentoring of students and faculty in the technology transfer process, career services for students interested in medtech careers, and community educational events.

SPARK

SPARK is a novel drug and diagnostics discovery program that teaches an innovative, cost-effective way to overcome the hurdles associated with translating academic discoveries into drugs or diagnostics that address real clinical needs. It offers innovators grants, lab access and mentors in the areas of discovery, product development, trial design, regulatory science and intellectual property law.

SPADA

SPADA, the Stanford Predictives and Diagnostics Accelerator, assists interdisciplinary innovators in research, development and deployment of technologies that improve human health through disease prediction and/or diagnosis.

PILOT FUNDING

Spectrum offers grants for accelerating clinical and translational research (CTR) in the thematic areas of therapeutics (drug discovery and development); medtech; predictives and diagnostics; population health sciences and community engagement.

The Stanford CTSA/Spectrum Pilot Grant Program has two major goals:

• to stimulate innovative clinical and translational research and
• to encourage collaborative, transdisciplinary work, both of which accelerate the translation of medical discoveries into improved health.

The goal of this early-stage funding is to enable investigators to gather proof-of-concept data that enables follow-on funding, information dissemination and most important, momentum that helps to move these novel solutions from the idea stage to clinical use. While we encourage transdisciplinary collaborations, it is not a requirement for funding.

Applications for the 2016 cycle of funding are due by 6pm on Wednesday, September 30, 2015. Before applying, please carefully review the funding criteria and 2016 Request for Proposals for the category under which you will apply:

• SPARK (Therapeutics) (drug discovery and development)
• Biodesign (Medtech)
• SPADA (Predictives and Diagnostics)
• Population Health Sciences
• Community Engagement

Before applying, read the Spectrum Pilot Grants Policies

Spectrum Pilot Grants for SPARK support development of novel therapeutics (small molecules, peptides, biologics, nucleic acid therapies, vaccines, gene therapies, stem cells, etc.) and diagnostics for unmet medical needs. Selected projects receive funding ($15,000-$50,000 per year), mentorship, and access to expert advisors from all stages of drug and diagnostic development. Proposals will be considered for any clinical indication and evaluated on the following criteria:

• the scope and/or severity of unmet medical need,
• novelty of approach, and
• feasibility of the path to clinic

Projects may address an unmet need in any clinical area and we give special consideration to projects for global health, pediatrics, rare orphan diseases and other therapeutic areas that have been traditionally neglected by the for-profit sector. For a list of funded projects from previous cycles, please visit "List of Past Pilot Grant Awards" article below.

Applications for the 2016 cycle of funding are due by 6pm on Wednesday, September 30, 2015.

Spectrum Pilot Grants for Medtech must have the objective of translating discoveries into novel medtech products that address unmet medical needs. Emphasis will be placed on technologies that have the potential to advance rapidly into patient care through development by venture funded startups, licensing to established companies, or other pathways. Funds must be applied to specific tasks that increase the probability of translational success and outside funding. Some examples include prototype device development, preclinical studies and investigator-initiated pilot clinical studies. For a list of funded projects from previous cycles, please visit "List of Past Pilot Grant Awards" article below. Note only projects involving Stanford-owned intellectual property will be considered.

The defined scope of the Medtech component is to support projects involving medical devices and mobile technologies used for (1) therapeutic applications and (2) device-based patient specific (or POC) diagnostic applications.

Applications for the 2016 cycle of funding are due by 6pm on Wednesday, September 30, 2015. Before applying, please carefully review the 2016 Request for Proposals for Medtech.

Spectrum Pilot Grants for SPADA projects must have the objective of translating discoveries into novel Predictives and Diagnostics products that address unmet medical needs. Emphasis will be placed on technologies that have the potential to advance rapidly into clinical care through commercialization or other pathways. For this reason, proposals should specifically address as much as is feasible any or all of: size and scope of unmet need, drawbacks of current options, regulatory pathway, intellectual property landscape and freedom to operate. Funds must be applied to tasks specifically budgeted by the investigator that advance the technology toward the clinic and comply with Spectrum’s funding guidelines. Some examples include prototype device development and investigator-initiated pilot clinical studies. For a list of projects funded in previous cycles and funding guidelines, please visit "List of Past Pilot Grant Awards" article below.

The defined scope of the Predictives and Diagnostics component includes projects with a goal of diagnosing and/or predicting the onset, course, worsening, or complications of disease, and prolonging health.

Applications for the 2016 cycle of funding are due by 6pm on Wednesday, September 30, 2015.

Spectrum Pilot Grants for Population Health Sciences must have a clear focus on the health of populations. The Stanford Population Health Science Initiative aims to facilitate information exchange, collaboration and resource sharing among faculty, staff, students and community partners interested in population health. Some research examples include studies of health-care delivery, physical and social health determinants, comparative effectiveness research, health economics, cost effectiveness and effectiveness of community interventions. Projects involving multidisciplinary teams, particularly those that span schools, are highly encouraged.

Organizers are also working to build interdisciplinary teams to design and implement the learning health care systems (LHCS) of the future (for more information on this initiative, visit http://spectrum.stanford.edu/accordions/population-health-sciences/. These systems will draw on the day-to-day experiences of practicing doctors, as well as information extracted from clinical data warehouses and a variety of diagnostics assays and measurements to create new sources of practice-based evidence. This research area is the subject of a separate RFP (see the Stanford Learning Health Care Innovation Challenge RFP), and Population Health Sciences Pilot Grant applications focused on any of these topics will be reviewed with the LHCS applications. Therefore, applicants are encouraged to submit such grants only to the Stanford Learning Health Care Innovation Challenge. Notably LHCS proposals will NOT require investigators from multiple departments although this is encouraged.

Applications for the 2016 cycle of funding are due by 6pm on Wednesday, September 30, 2015. Before applying, please carefully review the 2016 Request for Proposals for Population Health Sciences.

Spectrum Pilot Grants for Community Engagement must be strong community-based research projects involving collaborative partnerships with community agencies such as community health centers, schools, county health departments and/or hospital systems or other nonprofit health organizations in the local Bay Area. Award recipients are encouraged to follow the principles of Community Engagement and include project expenses that support the community partner’s role in the proposed project. Funding must be used to support the implementation of a community-based research project involving local health issues.

Applications for the 2016 cycle of funding are due by 6pm on Wednesday, September 30, 2015. Before applying, please carefully review the 2016 Request for Proposals for Community Engagement.

Spectrum and the Center for Population Health Sciences are very pleased to announce that Stanford Health Care (SHC) is partnering with us to expand funding for seed grants that will implement novel learning health care systems approaches to contemporary health care problems. We solicit proposals that will have a clear focus on using data to improve the health of the patient populations served by SHC, with the requirement that the proposal must use data from one or more SHC data system (e.g., STRIDE, EPIC, or data that can be linked to EMRs), or comparable clinical data that could be used as a surrogate to test a SHC learning health care system application.

Research topics of specific interest include but are not limited to:

• Developing new innovations that will improve the clinical workflow in the SHC system, such as:
• creating new guidelines, processes, protocols, decision support tools, and other interventions that can be iteratively improved with feedback from practicing clinicians, and
• using information extracted from clinical data warehouses to improve patient care.
• Research that will use data to provide information to clinicians at the point of care enabling them to predict which patients are at greatest risk of developing certain conditions, experiencing adverse events, or benefiting from specific interventions.
• Developing and testing data-based approaches that will enable personalized approaches to treatment decisions about medications, procedures and medical devices.
• Incorporating patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) and patient preferences into the clinical process for improved shared clinical decision-making.

The primary expectation is that these early-stage pilot projects will lead to additional research, external support, information dissemination and most important, will develop into longer-term, comprehensive projects. We strongly encourage submissions that propose partnerships and collaborations with SHC clinicians, informaticians and other partners in the SHC system. Projects that utilize VA data can be submitted; however, they must explore an important question with results that are generalizable to SHC.

Applications for the 2016 cycle of funding are due by 6pm on Friday, September 30, 2015.