Mobile Health Data Hub Coming to University of Memphis

Oct. 09--The University of Memphis has landed its largest federal research grant, a $10.8 million award that will put U of M at the center of a national experiment to collect medical data relayed from sensors soon to be worn by thousands of Americans.

The National Institutes of Health announced the award Thursday and disclosed a software center of excellence -- aimed at pulling data from mobile sensors -- will be based at the U of M.

The university's research center is part of the NIH's larger $656 million campaign to make wider use of technology in health care. Locating the Mobile Sensor Data to Knowledge Center of Excellence in Memphis opens way for university researchers to possibly turn future data and ideas into tech businesses as well as attract top graduate students, positioning U of M among the top tier of researchers harvesting what is known as big data.

Just how much business the new data center might someday spin off in Memphis isn't clear, although Samsung already has been in contact, said U of M associate professor Santosh Kumar, the computer scientist leading the initiative.

Memphis scientists and researchers win about $100 million per year in National Institutes of Health grants. While the money is used for medical discoveries, few ideas have blossomed into businesses and tech jobs in the city.

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital attracts about two thirds of the money and most of the remainder goes to the University of Tennessee medical complex.

NIH, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is the government's largest source of grants for basic scientific research. NIH distributed $30.1 billion last year. Relatively little has found its way to Memphis.

Vanderbilt University, in contrast, received $311 million last year, while the University of California at Los Angeles took in $341 million from NIH and the University of Michigan $412 million.

U of M received more than $50 million in research funds from all sources last year, but only $3.6 million from NIH, a relatively small amount that traces to the university's lack of medical research. Landing the big data award Thursday was hailed as a milestone by university officials.

"It is, I think with little debate, the single most significant research accomplishment we've had in the history of the university -- and that's 102 years," said U of M President David Rudd.

The $10.8 million award will be dispersed over four years and link Kumar and the Mobile Sensor Data to Knowledge Center of Excellence -- known as MD2K for short -- with a team of top-level scientists at 11 universities.

"The big data initiative at NIH says that we are drowned with data, what we need are the tools to extract information out of all the data, so that ultimately doctors and people themselves can indeed start to benefit from all this data rather than being drowned with the data," Kumar said.

Kumar has gained a national reputation for mobile health research, collaborating with scientists at other universities to develop devices such as sensors that can be worn and smartphones used to continuously collect real-world data about a person's health, behaviors and environment. Popular Science magazine in 2010 included him among the nation's 10 most brilliant scientists under age 38. He's now reached 37.

Spurred by federal research grants for several years, the mobile health devices and sensors and the data they collect have multiplied. That helped prompt the NIH to launch a next-generation of research known as BD2K -- for Big Data to Knowledge.

The Memphis center will be one of 12 established under the BD2K initiative. NIH grants will total $32 million this year for the program. NIH plans to invest nearly $656 million through 2020.

Spearheading research to harness mobile device big data is expected to boost the university's attractiveness for faculty and graduate students, as well as to attract corporations and entrepreneurs.

Kumar said he's already been asked to give a talk at Samsung, a leading smartphone maker in South Korea, although his schedule wouldn't allow that trip.

"What we're hoping right now, just thinking as a scientist, we're hoping that we can provide the engine that underlies the mobile health apps," he said.

Rudd said the new center of excellence attracts new opportunities and partnerships, not only with other universities but with potential corporate partners, in terms of spinoff technology and technology transfer. The university is in early conversations with Samsung, he said.

"Those are opportunities that are already emerging for the university and we're going to pursue them in the coming months and the coming year," he said.

Kevin Boggs, assistant vice president of technology transfer and interim executive director of the university's FedEx Institute of Technology, said that MD2K technology in some cases will be brought to market "when large companies license and make significant investments required to develop new products based on our technology."

"In other cases, entrepreneurs here and at our partner schools will see an opportunity, partner with master's and PhD. graduates from the program and launch startups," he said.

At the U of M, the FedEx Institute for Technology and Crews Center for Entrepreneurship "have great networks of local entrepreneurs and investors and other resources to support those entrepreneurs in Memphis who are interested in leveraging access to this great new global opportunity," Boggs said.

The MD2K center is housed in the FedEx Institute with a core staff of five, Kumar said.

He's collaborated with physician-scientists and researchers in other disciplines, but for the new center of excellence, Kumar said "superstar" scientists from a variety of areas, including biomedical, computer science, engineering and statistical fields, will work together. About 50 people will be part of the center, including 22 scientists, students and postdoctoral researchers.

Another U of M faculty member, J. Gayle Beck, the Lillian and Morrie Moss Chair of Excellence in the Department of Psychology, will lead the center's training to spread the software tools developed to the larger scientific community. Researchers will get the software at no cost.

At least once a year Memphis will host the scientists from Cornell Tech; Georgia Tech; Northwestern; Ohio State; Rice; University of California's Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco campuses; University of Massachusetts Amherst; University of Michigan and Open mHealth, a nonprofit advocate of open-source mobile apps to pave the way for sharing data between doctors and patients.

The development of smart software that can be used by biomedical researchers, and eventually by health care providers and consumers, will be based on two studies producing data from mobile sensors, Kumar said. One, at Ohio State's medical school, will focus on congestive heart failure, the top cause of hospital readmissions. The other, at Northwestern's medical school, will sift for triggers that cause smokers who have tried to quit but light up again; smoking is the highest cause of death, about 18 percent, in the country, Kumar said.

For congestive heart failure, for example, sensors and their data can track fluid in the lungs and may point to whether for that person consumed had too much salt or fluids, they physical activity patterns, places visited, conversations had, stress or dozens of other factors, Kumar said.

Early detection and ultimately prevent them, are goals of learning how to crunch mobile sensor big data, he said.

"We don't have that capability today, but perhaps we can," Kumar said.

Copyright 2014 - The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn.