The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), with the support of its partners, is offering up to $1,000,000 in cash prizes for innovative diagnostic technologies to help improve maternal health around the world. Pregnancy and childbirth complications are a major global health problem, resulting in the deaths of more than 800 women and 7,000 newborns each day. Contributing to the high rates of maternal morbidity and mortality in low-resource settings is a lack of low-cost diagnostics that operate at the point-of-care and are capable of detecting and differentiating common conditions associated with pregnancy.
The NIH Technology Accelerator Challenge for Maternal Health (NTAC: Maternal Health) seeks to spur and reward the development of prototypes for low-cost, point-of-care molecular, cellular, and/or metabolic sensing and diagnostic technologies to guide rapid clinical decision-making, improve patient outcomes, and ultimately prevent maternal morbidity and mortality.
To win NTAC: Maternal Health, participants must: (1) Submit their design for a point-of-care diagnostic test or platform technology with initial feasibility data or references addressing at least two of the four priority conditions listed below affecting maternal health during antenatal and intrapartum periods; and (2) Submit a robust description of the proposed path for translation and further development of the diagnostic technology for use in global health settings. Additionally, diagnostics should be fully integrated digital health platforms. The four priority conditions and specific examples are as follows:
- Infection: viral, bacterial, or parasitic infections; sepsis; post-procedural infections
- Hypertensive disease: pre-eclampsia; eclampsia
- Hemorrhage: acute anemia; iron deficiency anemia; coagulopathy
- Placental issues: angiogenic or other markers of placental disruption
Submissions of diagnostic technologies may address additional conditions of relevance to maternal health; however, only those submissions that address at least two of the four priority conditions listed above will be considered for cash prizes. A strong submission to this Challenge will include a diagnostic technology design with the following characteristics:
- Technical validity demonstrated by initial feasibility data or references
- Platform potential – potential to adapt or extend the device to at least two of the priority conditions
- Measures parameters that could be used to track disease state and/or response to therapy
- Uses mobile device or portable attachment to a mobile device
- Low-cost, accurate, reliable, and accessible
- Self-contained and highly portable
- Allows rapid data collection and time to result
- Integrates prior context about the patient and environment in the test result
- Scalable to population delivery
Additional information about the Challenge is provided in the NTAC: Maternal Health Challenge Announcement, along with eligibility and participation rules, judging criteria, and registration and submission instructions and guidelines.
The registration deadline is April 1, 2022, the submission deadline is April 22, 2022.
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