Foundations for Digital Twins as Catalyzers of Biomedical Technological Innovation (FDT-BioTech)

The Foundations for Digital Twins as Catalyzers of Biomedical Technological Innovation (FDT-BioTech) program supports inherently interdisciplinary research projects that underpin the mathematical and engineering foundations behind the development and use of digital twins and synthetic data in biomedical and healthcare applications, with a particular focus on digital, in silico models used in the evaluation of medical devices and the relevance of the developed models in addressing current and emerging challenges affecting the development and assessment of biomedical technologies. The goal of the FDT-BioTech initiative is to catalyze biomedical technological innovation through new foundational development of methods and algorithms relevant to digital twins and synthetic humans. This interagency solicitation is a collaboration between the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The program supports innovative and transformative research to advance the mathematical, statistical, and engineering approaches underpinning digital twins in biomedical and healthcare domains ultimately enabling unique tools for innovative evaluation of novel emerging technology that can potentially de-risk therapeutic, biologic, and medical device development and accelerate the introduction of safe and effective medical technologies for improved patient outcomes. The program welcomes submissions that contain outcomes (methods and models) with a clear dissemination plan, made available as practical, open-source tools that industry can utilize in support of the development of new biomedical technologies. Successful projects are anticipated to be collaborative in nature and have at least two senior/key personnels, with participation from both the mathematical sciences and at least one of the domain knowledge disciplines such as the biomedical sciences or computer science with cyberinfrastructure development expertise. All proposals must identify potential ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of the proposed work and outline ways to mitigate negative implications.