National Science Foundation Announces Award on Pragmatic Clinical Trials

PALO ALTO, Calif., Dec. 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Science Foundation announces a grant to VMT for developing technology focused on pragmatic clinical trials allowing clinical outcomes to be extracted from real world data. The approach uses artificial intelligence to dive deep into the electronic health record (EHR) for outcome data to enable EHR-based pragmatic clinical trials. Upon completion of the grant, VMT intends to spin out its technology to Verantos, the market leader in regulatory-grade EHR-based studies.

As regulatory bodies increasingly look to real world evidence (RWE) to augment the standard of care, pharmaceutical companies are exploring how to run advanced studies to understand real world impact of therapies on important clinical outcomes. Outcomes, such as symptoms, signs, and disease-free survival, are unavailable or inaccurate in claims and EHR structured data. This award will deploy advanced semantic technologies to extract these hidden outcomes and enable valid and relevant RWE.

"We are excited to have the support of the National Science Foundation," said Dan Riskin, MD, MBA, principal investigator on the award. "This award reflects advanced science in an area of critical need. The ability to use real world outcomes in pragmatic clinical trials will lead to safer and better targeted care."

Support for this grant is provided by the National Science Foundation's Small Business Innovation Research program under award number 1819388.  The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) / Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs are intended to provide early stage, high-tech small businesses with grants for proof-of-concept / feasibility research that could potentially be followed by grants for cutting-edge, high-quality scientific research and development to de-risk their technologies.

"The National Science Foundation supports small businesses with the most innovative, cutting-edge ideas that have the potential to become great commercial successes and make huge societal impacts," said Barry Johnson, Director of the NSF's Division of Industrial Innovation and Partnerships. "We hope that this seed funding will spark solutions to some of the most important challenges of our time across all areas of science and technology."

This award reflects the National Science Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

About the NSF's Small Business Programs
America's Seed Fund powered by the National Science Foundation awards more than $200 million annually to startups and small businesses, transforming scientific discovery into products and services with commercial and societal impact. Startups working across almost all areas of science and technology can receive up to $1.5 million in non-dilutive funds to support research and development (R&D), helping de-risk technology for commercial success. America's Seed Fund is congressionally mandated through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. The NSF is an independent federal agency with a budget of about $7.8 billion that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering. For more information, visit seedfund.nsf.gov.

About VMT
Vanguard Medical Technologies (VMT) is a medical technology incubation firm, developing and commercializing cutting-edge healthcare products to address critical healthcare needs. Companies incubated out of VMT, such as Verantos, have become leading firms in digital health.

About Verantos
Verantos is the market leader in electronic health record (EHR)-based studies for regulatory and reimbursement use. The company delivers turnkey regulatory-grade real world evidence studies for top biopharmaceutical firms. Advanced data sources and artificial intelligence approaches enable studies that would otherwise be inaccurate or not possible using traditional data sources and approaches. Achieving credible real world evidence studies lowers cost and risk in label expansion, post-marketing surveillance, and reimbursement.

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SOURCE Verantos; National Science Foundation