Latest Jump ARCHES Grants Focus on Health Equity & Early Intervention

Thirteen research projects are sharing nearly $970,000 in funding through the Jump ARCHES research and development program. The Jump Applied Research for Community Health through Engineering and Simulation (Jump ARCHES) program is a partnership between OSF HealthCare and the University of Illinois (U of I), Urbana-Champaign and its College of Medicine in Peoria.

The program supports research involving clinicians, engineers, and social scientists to develop technologies and devices that could revolutionize medical training and health care delivery.

These projects were submitted to the Fall 2020 Jump ARCHES request for proposals which concerned six unique focus areas: digital health, social and behavioral disparities, autism, neurological sciences, COVID-19, and simulation and education. This was the first Jump ARCHES request for proposals that specifically concerned social and behavioral disparities to mitigate the impact of age, location, and social barriers in delivering quality health care to vulnerable populations. Emphasis was given to proposals that addressed racism, social justice, social and implicit biases, health equity, and access to care.

“Our experience with the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us that safe and health-focused behavior has played such an important factor in mitigating the spread of the disease,” said John Vozenilek, M.D., F.A.C.E.P., V.P., and Chief Medical Officer of Jump Simulation Center in Peoria. Many of the projects represented here involve technology to improve earlier intervention which is key, particularly as we look to bring solutions for disparities in health outcomes for those who are at increased risk. It is clear there is a link between chronic health conditions and vulnerability to infectious diseases such as COVID-19. He added, “Our work is to improve prevention and early treatment for those disproportionately impacted.”

Since its inception in 2014, Jump ARCHES has awarded more than $5.46 million in funding to collaborative projects between the three institutions and across many disciplines. The effort expanded opportunities with an additional major gift in 2019.

“The scope of Jump ARCHES has expanded in recent years to foster collaboration with disciplines outside of engineering and medicine, such as social sciences,” said T. Kesh Kesavadas, Ph.D., director of the Health Care Engineering Systems Center at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Technology such as AI, sensors, and simulation training can integrate with and improve outcomes in other fields in innovative ways.” Kesavadas added, “Above all, Jump ARCHES is striving to improve people’s lives after the disastrous impact of COVID-19 on daily life.”

“The integration of engineering and social science promises to make the University of Illinois the world’s leading institution for innovative, technologically-driven research on social science topics, and puts social sciences in a position to advise and shape engineering efforts,” said Brent Roberts, Ph.D., director of the Center for Social and Behavioral Sciences at Illinois. He added, “The alignment of CSBS with the ARCHES program fits perfectly with a goal of our new center, to harness the technological innovations of engineering to make society better.”

A special request for proposals for spring 2021 is being planned with an emphasis on solutions to the unprecedented challenges faced by our society as we develop policies and procedures in a post-COVID-19 world.

Here are summaries of some key projects with a full list of Fall 2020 projects available on the Jump ARCHES website.

Remote state anxiety detection and monitoring using multimodal wearable sensors

Investigators: Manuel E. Hernandez, PhD, UIUC; Elizabeth Hsiao-Wecksler, PhD, UIUC; Richard Sowers, PhD, UIUC; Brent Roberts, PhD, UIUC; Susan Caldecott-Johnson, MD, UICOMP, OSF HealthCare Children’s Hospital of Illinois; Jean Clore, PhD, UICOMP

In frontline health care workers, recent evidence suggests increased depression, anxiety, insomnia and distress due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Even without COVID-19, physician trainees face mental health challenges as they provide care and learn clinical best practices. This project will integrate data from a suite of wearable sensors to quantify symptoms of stress and anxiety in physician trainees. The idea is to use information gleaned from sensors to monitor and potentially improve wellbeing before mental health disorders develop.

Spatio-temporal Analysis with Tensor Factorization and Visualization for Pediatric Mobile Vaccination

Investigators: Jimeng Sun, PhD, UIUC; Mary Stapel, MD, OSF HealthCare; Scott Barrows, OSF HealthCare; Adam Cross, MD, OSF HealthCare; Elise Albers, OSF HealthCare; Ginger Barton, OSF HealthCare; Michelle Sheppard, OSF HealthCare; George Heintz, MSPH, MSE, UIUC; Yaroslav Daniel Bodnar, MD, OSF HealthCare, UICOMP

This project proposes to use AI technology to understand and improve the pediatric population health challenge of timely vaccination. With the help of AI, the project will visualize spatio-temporal patterns, identify critical geographic areas with the most concerning rates of under-vaccination, predict the supply need and deploy mobile immunization units to increase vaccination rates for those areas. This will improve vaccination rates in high-risk zip codes, revealing barriers around access to care and other social determinant obstacles.

Toward Automated Diagnosis of Seizures and 3D Representation of SEEG Clinical Data

Investigators: Matthew Bramlet, MD, UICOMP, OSF HealthCare; Brad Sutton, PhD, UIUC; Yogatheesan Varatharajah, PhD, UIUC; Andres Maldonado, MD, UICOMP, OSF HealthCare; Michael Xu, MD, PhD, UICOMP, OSF HealthCare

Some patients with seizures face debilitating effects that pharmacologic therapy cannot treat. These patients are left with surgery as their best option that requires an invasive procedure (stereotactic-electroencephalography or SEEG) to pinpoint the origin of these seizures. This project will present surgeons with a stereoscopic 3D model to give surgeons a better mental representation of where seizures are occurring. The group also wants to develop an automated interpretation algorithm of SEEG tracings, and create predictive algorithms to reduce invasive testing.

See the complete list of the latest Jump ARCHES grant projects.