care.coach
Tuesday, September 26, 2023
care.coach is awarded a (SBIR) grant by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), an institute within the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The funds will help care.coach implement and scale the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) STEADI fall prevention algorithm.
care.coach, a California-based company, has been awarded a $3 million small business innovation and research (SBIR) grant by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), an institute within the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The funds will help care.coach implement and scale the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) STEADI fall prevention algorithm using care.coach Avatar™, a conversational health coaching platform driven by care.coach’s unique combination of human staff and artificial intelligence (AI). The care.coach platform already serves Medicare and Medicaid health plan members nationally, including those aging with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD).
This newly-funded care.coach STEADI project builds upon past research published with the Clinical Excellence Research Center (CERC) at Stanford University showing significantly fewer falls in elderly hospitalized patients by using care.coach Avatarâ„¢ to implement a multifactorial behavioral intervention, the Hospital Elder Life Program (HELP). Other care.coach research funded by the NIA has resulted in an integrated suite of proprietary AI models for automatic recognition and response to natural speech with best-in-class accuracy, including the technically challenging speech of individuals with MCI and ADRD. The company has also developed the care.coach COREâ„¢ platform, a conversational and process automation system that delivers a range of evidence-based chronic disease coaching programs through conversations with care.coach Avatarâ„¢. The STEADI project will capitalize on these solutions to reduce fall risk and rate of falls in community-dwelling older adults.
The overall mission of care.coach is to improve the health and well-being of millions of Americans, including those aging with MCI and ADRD.
The aforementioned research & development (R&D) projects are supported by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health under Award Numbers R44AG085913 and R44AG062014. The content of this press release is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health or Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The STEADI―Older Adult Fall Prevention Initiative can be found at https://www.cdc.gov/steadi/. The care.coach HELP study can be found at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31625949/.
About the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases.
The National Institute on Aging (NIA) leads a broad scientific effort to understand the nature of aging and to extend our healthy, active years of life. NIA is the primary federal agency supporting and conducting Alzheimer's disease research.
The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and the Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs are key parts of NIH's mission to turn discovery into health. These programs set aside $1.3 billion in non-dilutive funding every year to support research and development with strong potential for commercial impact.
About care.coach
care.coach builds personal relationships and coaches healthy behaviors at scale, through empathic workforces and AI. The company is funded by US Congress, National Institutes of Health, and investors including StartUp Health and AARP. Current customers include Program of All-inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) health plans, Medicare Advantage (MA) insurers, state Medicaid programs, and consumers. The platform has achieved outcomes including reduced falls, reduce emergency department visits, and reduced total cost of care. The suite of solutions include (1) care.coach Augurâ„¢ population outcome stratification through machine learning predictive models, (2) care.coach Hospitality Hubâ„¢ US-based, multi-channel contact center and device fulfillment/support center, (3) care.coach Video Visitsâ„¢ multi-party social and medical care made ultra-simple, (4) care.coach Avatarâ„¢ continuous, long-term relationships and health coaching supported by a 24x7 global team of health advocates, and (5) care.coach Faraâ„¢ relationship-building and behavior-driving generative conversational AI trained on millions of conversations from care.coach Avatarâ„¢.