The American Heart Association has awarded $2.5 million to Johns Hopkins University to investigate how digital technology can improve cardiovascular health.

The grant will fund the creation of the Center for Mobile Technologies to Achieve Equity in Cardiovascular Health. The new center will be led by Seth Martin, an associate professor of cardiology and member of the Malone Center for Engineering in Healthcare, and David E. Newman-Toker, a professor of neurology. The team’s mission is to leverage mobile and wearable technologies to empower patients and clinicians, enhance quality of care, increase value, and improve the diagnosis and management of heart diseases and stroke. The Armstrong Institute Center for Diagnostic Excellence played a key role in the grant submission and will be integral to project completion.

The award is part of a $14 million grant to several institutions for work on reducing health care disparities with the help of technology. Four multidisciplinary teams from Johns Hopkins, Stanford School of Medicine, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, and the University of Michigan will make up the Association’s new Strategically Focused Research Network on Health Technologies and Innovation. These teams will work on developing breakthrough technology solutions to improve health outcomes related to heart and brain health, including special projects that will focus on addressing issues related to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.The institutions will share another $4 million to work together on at least one project and form a national health technology research collaborative.

“The widespread consumer adoption of healthcare technology, fueled by increasingly sophisticated technology on digital mediums including tablets, smartphones and wearable devices, offers a unique outlet to find new solutions to improve health outcomes,” said American Heart Association president Robert A. Harrington, M.D., FAHA, Arthur L. Bloomfield Professor of Medicine and chair of the department of medicine at Stanford University. “As the peer review team moved forward with their selection of the centers for our latest Strategically Focused Research Network right at the break of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S., the Association felt this was an incredible opportunity for us to provide additional support in harnessing new innovations to tackle the challenges that are crippling the nation, and frankly the globe.”

From the AHA release: 

Center for Mobile Technologies to Achieve Equity in Cardiovascular Health at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore – Led by cardiologist Seth Martin, M.D., M.H.S., and neurologist David Newman-Toker, M.D., Ph.D., this team’s mission is to leverage mobile and wearable technologies to empower patients and clinicians, enhance quality of care, increase value and improve the diagnosis and management of heart diseases and stroke. Early and accurate diagnoses are essential to ensure the appropriate delivery of guideline recommended management to engage patients and their caregivers to achieve the best patient outcomes possible. The collaborative project will span the patient experience from diagnosis to management to improve patient care throughout the patient journey. Specifically, the team will develop and test a smartphone application for stroke diagnosis, following their experience with a goggle-based eye tracking technology in the Armstrong Institute Center for Diagnostic Excellence. On the management side, the team will work on a virtual cardiovascular rehab that builds on their Corrie Health platform to empower patients in guideline-based prevention. Patients and their families from demographically diverse backgrounds will join as partners in the technology advancement process.

Read the full press release here >>