Smart and Connected Health | 18 541

Opportunity Information: Apply for 18 541

The Smart and Connected Health (SCH) grant opportunity is an interagency research program led by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in partnership with federal health research agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Its core aim is to speed up the creation and real-world integration of advanced computing and information science approaches that can meaningfully transform health, medicine, and healthcare delivery. The program is built around the idea that major improvements in health outcomes will come from pairing technology-driven innovation with biomedical and biobehavioral research, rather than treating health technology as a purely engineering problem or treating health research as separate from modern data and computing systems.

The solicitation targets next-generation, multidisciplinary science and is intentionally broad in the types of technical and scientific breakthroughs it wants to encourage. Priority areas include networking and connected systems that can move health data securely and reliably; pervasive and mobile computing that supports care anywhere, not just in clinical settings; advanced analytics such as machine learning and other data-driven methods that can extract actionable insights from complex health data; sensor integration and cyberphysical systems that bring together wearable devices, environmental sensors, and clinical instruments; and strong privacy and security methods appropriate for sensitive medical information. It also explicitly calls for modeling that accounts for human behavior, socio-behavioral dynamics, and cognitive processes, recognizing that health interventions succeed or fail partly because of how people make decisions, comply with treatment, and interact with technologies. In addition, the program encourages system and process modeling to improve how healthcare workflows operate, how care is coordinated, and how health systems can adapt to new tools and practices.

A key theme throughout SCH is that impactful solutions must work under real constraints. Proposed systems and methods should account for clinical and medical needs, barriers to adoption and change in healthcare environments, and the messy reality of heterogeneous data sources, inconsistent formats, and semantic mismatches across platforms and institutions. The solicitation also highlights limitations in current cyberphysical systems and the growing pressures associated with an aging population, which often increases complexity of care and raises the importance of continuous monitoring, home-based support, and coordinated services. Because of these challenges, SCH expects teams that can cover the full range from foundational computer and information science and engineering to practical medical and public health considerations, with designs that anticipate deployment, usability, and real-world impact.

The program frames itself as both rigorous and ambitious. It emphasizes a coordinated approach that balances theory with evidence-based analysis, values systematic advances while still pushing for genuinely disruptive ideas, and expects cross-disciplinary collaboration that leads to new fundamental insights. Importantly, it encourages empirical validation through research prototypes. These prototypes can be narrow, such as a key algorithmic component or security mechanism, or broad, such as an end-to-end connected health system tested in realistic conditions. In other words, the solicitation is not only looking for promising concepts on paper; it wants credible demonstrations that new approaches can work and can be evaluated in ways that matter for health contexts.

From an application standpoint, the solicitation is focused on high-risk, high-reward research that combines computing, engineering, and technology with behavior and cognition to advance health and medical research. It strongly encourages collaborations among academia, industry, and other organizations to tighten the link between fundamental research and the realities of healthcare practice, technology development, deployment, and adoption. The program is aligned with national-level calls for new partnerships that can drive major changes in health and medicine, and it positions itself as foundational research intended to enable those large-scale shifts rather than incremental, isolated improvements.

This particular opportunity (Funding Opportunity Number 18-541) is categorized as a discretionary grant in the science and technology research and development space, administered by NSF, with multiple CFDA numbers reflecting the multi-agency nature of the program. The opportunity anticipated around 16 awards, and the solicitation specifies that only Integrative (INT) proposals are eligible. These integrative projects must involve multidisciplinary teams and can span up to four years, reinforcing the program’s expectation that meaningful smart and connected health advances require sustained, coordinated work across technical, clinical, and human-centered domains. The eligibility language is listed as “Others (see additional information),” signaling that applicants should confirm eligibility details in the full solicitation text, especially given the interagency structure and the emphasis on cross-sector collaboration.

• The National Science Foundation in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Smart and Connected Health" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 47.041, 47.070, 47.075, 93.172, 93.242, 93.273, 93.286, 93.396, 93.853, 93.866, 93.879.
• This funding opportunity was created on Feb 21, 2018.
• Applicants must submit their applications by May 22, 2018. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 16 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

Apply for 18 541

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