Smart and Connected Health | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The Smart and Connected Health (SCH) program is a federal research grant opportunity led by the National Science Foundation (NSF), with participation and alignment across health-focused federal partners such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Its central aim is to speed up a major shift in healthcare away from a reactive, hospital-centered model and toward care that is preventive, proactive, evidence-based, and person-centered, with an emphasis on overall well-being rather than only treating disease after it appears. The program is built on the idea that real healthcare transformation will come from pairing advanced technology with biobehavioral and clinical research, so that new tools are not just technically impressive but actually workable in real-world settings where people, clinicians, workflows, and health systems have practical limits and competing demands.

SCH is specifically seeking next-generation, high-risk/high-reward research that blends information science and engineering with health and behavioral sciences. The solicitation highlights research directions such as wearable and ambient sensor technologies, networking and connected devices, data platforms, artificial intelligence and machine learning, decision support systems for clinicians and patients, and computational modeling of behavioral and cognitive processes. It also emphasizes system and process modeling, reflecting the reality that healthcare outcomes depend not only on a device or algorithm, but also on how care is delivered, coordinated, and adopted. Proposals are expected to confront common barriers that often derail health technology: messy and heterogeneous data, semantic mismatches between systems, privacy and operational constraints, human cognitive limitations, social dynamics, uneven motivation, barriers to behavior change, and the limitations of current cyber-physical systems in clinical and home environments.

A key theme is multidisciplinary collaboration. SCH expects teams that can bridge fundamental science and practical deployment, bringing together expertise from computing, engineering, social and behavioral sciences, economics, medicine, biology, and related fields. The program frames this as essential because effective digital health solutions must work simultaneously at technical, human, and clinical levels. The solicitation also underscores broader national urgency: advances in high-throughput computing and connectivity have put medicine at a tipping point where stronger analytics, better sensing, and improved decision tools could accelerate discovery, improve outcomes, and lower costs for complex, high-burden conditions such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and neurodegenerative disorders. The opportunity is also positioned as a response to recommendations from major national bodies (including PCAST, the National Research Council, and the Institute of Medicine) and to federal strategic reviews emphasizing that networking and information technology will be central to solving large-scale healthcare challenges, particularly when paired with research on social, cognitive, and behavioral factors and the demands created by large, complex health datasets.

The funding opportunity (NSF Publication/Funding Opportunity Number 13-543) is a discretionary grant program in the Science and Technology and other Research and Development category. NSF anticipated about 25 awards with an estimated total program funding of $20,000,000. Individual award sizes were listed with a floor of $200,000 and a ceiling of $2,000,000, and there is no cost-sharing or matching requirement. The solicitation also identifies two proposal tracks. Exploratory Projects (EXP) support one or more investigators for projects lasting 1 to 3 years, generally appropriate for early-stage concepts, feasibility work, or targeted breakthroughs. Integrative Projects (INT) support multidisciplinary teams for 1 to 4 years, intended for more comprehensive efforts that integrate multiple components (for example, sensing plus analytics plus behavioral intervention plus clinical validation) and address broader system-level challenges.

Eligibility is oriented toward U.S.-based organizations engaged in research and education. Eligible applicants include accredited U.S. universities and two- and four-year colleges (including community colleges) acting on behalf of faculty, as well as certain non-profit, non-academic organizations such as independent museums, observatories, research laboratories, professional societies, and similar U.S. entities connected to educational or research activities. The solicitation notes that proposed topics may align with the missions of different participating organizations, and applicants are encouraged to consult the relevant agency contacts listed in the full solicitation to confirm fit and direction.

Administratively, the opportunity was originally posted March 8, 2013, with multiple deadline cycles referenced in the solicitation. The dataset you provided lists an original closing date of October 10, 2013 and a later current closing date of October 13, 2015 for both Exploratory (EXP) and Integrative (INT) proposals, with an archive date of January 9, 2016. The full announcement is referenced as NSF Publication 13-543, and the contact information provided points applicants to NSF Grants.gov support for technical access issues.

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