AWARDS HISTORY
Mary's Center
Development of a ChatBot to engage clients in HIV/STI awareness
In 2022 Mary’s Center awarded a grant to pilot a culturally sensitive, bilingual AI chatbot for use with participants seeking our HIV/STI services, which will allow for 24/7 accessibility to requesting a sexual health consultation. The benefits of an AI chatbot over more basic chatbots will allow Mary’s Center to use more advanced technologies to tailor our services to the participant. Additionally, we will be able to adapt the technology over time as we learn more about what participants are requesting. In order to create a chatbot that is both culturally and linguistically sensitive, we plan to leverage deep learning and natural language processing through a comprehensive testing process reflective of the diverse communities we serve.
The Mize Award: The Smithsonian Institution
Utilization of Archaeological Technology to Develop Insights Regarding Bone Health
An award was granted to the Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History for the project Human Bone Density in 17th Century America. This study will use DEXA scan imaging technology to analyze the bone health and general health of the early settlers of Jamestown, VA and St. Mary's, Maryland.Douglas W. Owsley, Smithsonian Curator in the Anthropology section has started on this project that could enhance knowledge in health care in a way that could further stimulate today's ongoing study of bone health in a positive way.
Zamorano University
The ITHC has funded Zamorano University Food Analysis projects since 2010. The hope is that as an agricultural college the diet of the surrounding population could be influenced in a positive manner. The purpose of an agricultural college is not only to produce food, but to produce food that is healthful. The work of the students and professors has supported this mission each year since.
2026 funding Project
The support of ITHC has been essential for Zamorano to consolidate this area of nutrition research, at a national and international level. Physical activity levels refer to the amount, intensity, frequency, and duration of physical activity performed by an individual or population, making them a key public health indicator. Body composition is a quantitative, noninvasive assessment that identifies risks of malnutrition, obesity, muscle loss, abnormal fat distribution, and other health problems. Isometric dynamometry is a technique used to
2measure the maximum force that a muscle or muscle group can exert without joint movement. This method is widely used in research, clinical practice, and sports practice, as it allows for the objective assessment of muscle strength in different populations, from healthy individuals to patients with neuromuscular diseases or orthopedic injuries (Daloia, 2018). However, physical activity habits can be influenced by lifestyle, academic load, and limited access to free time, especially among university students. Therefore, this study seeks to analyze the relationship between physical activity level, body composition, and handgrip strength in students of the Food Science Program, class of 2026. This would be the first study to include handgrip strength in university students, making it novel and interesting, a springboard for further studies in different population groups.
The Crudem Foundation
Medical records constitute a critical foundation of healthcare institutions and have the potential to improve access to information and quality of patient care. Ready access to reliable, up to date and accurate patient histories support timely diagnoses, appropriate therapies, and treatment plans. The majority of developed countries use electronic medical records (EMR) to ensure optimum efficiency and effectiveness.
Novel EMR implementations for low resource countries, such as Haiti, despite the considerable benefits, such systems are a luxury for most institutions in low resource countries.
Implementation of Electronic Medical Records in Haiti
Hôpital Sacré Coeur (“HSC”) in Milot recognizes the critical importance of EMR and has committed to upgrading its medical records system to an EMR model in order to provide their regional patient population with excellent, quality healthcare. That need is underscored by the steady annual increase in transaction volume: in 2019, Hôpital Sacré Coeur completed more than 590,000 patient transactions. Thankfully, HSC has both the infrastructure, staff competency and technical resources to entertain the inclusion of EMR in the hospital.
The Institute for Technology in Health Care supports The Crudem vision and is pleased to assist in The Crudem Foundation's continuation of this effort in 2022 with Phase 2 with the training of superusers --- individuals who will serve as onsite trainers and supervisors for the hospital staff. Haiti Health Promise U.S. Medical Director, James Morgan, MD, Hôpital Sacré 2 Coeur Chief Medical Officer and Chief of Pediatrics, Michele Hanna, MD, Chief of Pharmacy, Marcelle Etienne, and Hôpital Sacré Coeur Communications Center Director, Emmanel Jeannite comprise the onsite superuser team. The three-month superuser training program under the auspices of Mekom staff included onsite and virtual (Zoom) group meetings supplemented with instructional manuals and displays in French and English. A comprehensive user guide detailed step by step instructions for all aspects of the EMR processes and troubleshooting.
On Monday, October 19, 2015 the Cytopathology Laboratory at Hôpital Sacré-Coeur opened. Haitian women scored a life-changing victory. Thirty-seven Pap Smears were collected that day. They were prepared and stained. On Wednesday, October 21, all 37 Pap Smears had been read by Dr. Santos and the reports printed out. On Thursday, October 22nd, all 37 patients were notified of their results via a system devised by the clinical staff at Hôpital Sacré-Coeur. The following day some of those with abnormal reports had been seen, biopsied and were awaiting final disposition of their cases. One woman was unable to comprehend how such an important test, which had taken her two years to have performed, could have the results ready in only 3 days.
“The Institute for Technology in Health Care has changed this dreadful reality for the better. Because of your generous support, Hôpital Sacré-Coeur in Milot has been able to equip a small pathology lab and acquire the services of Dr. Rene Santos, a Cuban born Pathologist and the only specialist of his kind in all of Northern Haiti --- a region with a population of more than 2 million people..."
This capacity is a really significant step for the women of Haiti, not only for the lives which will be saved, but for the relief of the anxiety and mental anguish that these women endure in fear of this dread disease. This reality was brought home by the pinched, anxious face of one of those notified that her result was abnormal. She happened to be a nurse on the Hôpital Sacré-Coeur staff and she raced to the door of the Operating Room, where an OB-Gyn team was working, with fearful questions about her fate. The fact that the surgery team was able to answer her questions, examine her and perform a biopsy that same day is almost unbelievable to those who know from past experience what a time consuming ordeal this usually is for the patient.”
The Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI)
The ITHC approached AAMI to establish the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation Foundation / Institute for Technology in Health Care Clinical Solutions Award was established in 2005. This is an award that recognizes career achievement in the field of Clinical Engineering.
2025 Award:
Dr. K. Suseela Branham is the winner of the AAMI Foundation & Institute for Technology in Health Care Clinical Solution Award. This award honors a healthcare technology professional who has used innovative clinical engineering practices to solve a significant patient care problem.
Dr. Branham is the CEO of Biovalley Incubation Council and Head of Biologics & Diagnostics at the Andhra Pradesh MedTech Zone. She has 19 years of interdisciplinary expertise with institutional development in health care operations, business incubation management, clinical trial operations, quality assurance, and regulatory affairs in the medical device, pharmaceutical, and health care fields. She pursued a master’s degree at the University of Hyderabad in Animal Sciences/Biotechnology and Ph.D. in Biotechnology with an area of work in cancer biology at the Gandhi Institute of Technology.
As part of her duties at Biovalley and the Andhra Pradesh MedTech Zone, Dr. Branham leads and drives innovation through multiple projects and facilities. These include an innovative center, including a business incubation center, a 3D bio-printing facility housed in an ISO 14644-1 Class 7 Compliant cGMP process flow-based Infrastructure, an animal research center, an in-vitro diagnostic kit validation center, and a biobank. Notably, she supports startups by integrating risk classification, industry standards, and compliance testing across product life cycle development and works towards providing venture capital or technology transfer support for commercialization.
She also holds an MBA, a Master of Environmental Sciences, and a Master of Psychology. Dr. Branham has done extensive work as an internal auditor for a wide range of International Standards Organization (ISO) standards. She runs an NGO, the Sirisha Sujan Foundation (SSF), which provides assisted living services for senior citizens and the differently abled, and offers safe housing to members of vulnerable populations.
American Academy for HIV Medicine (AAHIVM)
AAHIVM/ITHC HIV Practice Award was established as an annual award in 2011, with the first awards given by the American Academy for HIV Medicine (AAHIVM) in 2012. Recipients are nominated for the award and an AAHIVM committee selects recipients. Some of the awards have been given for use of social media to educate at-risk populations, telemedicine to expand clinical reach in urban, rural, and prison populations, and in focusing electronic health software on the needs of clinicians specializing in treating HIV positive patients. While the ITHC funds the awards, it has no involvement in the selection process.
2026 Winner:
Omolola Ogunyemi, PhD, FACMI, and
LaShonda Spencer, MD, FAAP, AAHIVS
The American Academy of HIV Medicine and the Institute for Technology in Health Care have awarded the 2025 Cesar Augusto Caceres Award for Innovations in HIV Prevention and Care to Omolola Ogunyemi, PhD, FACMI, director of the Center for Biomedical Informatics at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science (CDU), and LaShonda Spencer, MD, FAAP, AAHIVS, director of the Drew Center for AIDS Research, Education and Services (Drew CARES) and the MLK OASIS Clinic. The award acknowledges outstanding contributions to HIV care and prevention and the advancement of health care through the creative use and application of technology.
Dr. Ogunyemi’s and Dr. Spencer’s initiative applies artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) to improve HIV treatment outcomes in South Los Angeles by predicting virologic failure among patients starting antiretroviral therapy and identifying individuals at risk for poor adherence or falling out of care. By integrating clinical data with social determinants of health and behavioral metrics, the project aims to enable earlier, targeted interventions to improve viral suppression rates, which currently fall well below local and national goals.
“We are deeply honored to receive this recognition,” says Dr. Ogunyemi. “The funding from the Caceres Award will help us further the goals of our program, using health information technology and data science to enhance equitable HIV prevention. By integrating clinical data with social determinants of health, we can shift from reactive treatment to proactive, personalized care.”
“We are incredibly proud to lead this innovative project, which leverages AI and machine learning to tackle the complex challenges of HIV treatment in South Los Angeles,” said Dr. Spencer. “Our goal is to significantly improve adherence to antiretroviral therapy and enhance the overall health outcomes for individuals with HIV, ultimately striving for greater health equity.”
A central innovation of this project is the integration of clinical, behavioral and social determinants of health (SDOH) data – such as income, housing instability, food insecurity and neighborhood-level health care access – in South Los Angeles. These data can be used to generate actionable, personalized risk predictions. Model performance will be evaluated using ten-fold cross-validation and standard metrics, as well as implementation-focused measures assessing patient identification and outreach. Patients identified as high risk will be referred to an established Enhanced Patient Navigation team that will provide a time-limited intervention utilizing housing-first, harm reduction and trauma-informed principles.
In its fourteenth year, the Cesar Augusto Caceres Award for Innovations in HIV Prevention and Care seeks to promote efficacious innovations developed in clinical settings that are designed to prevent, treat and care for people with or at risk of HIV. The award honors the legacy of Dr. Cesar Caceres, founder of the Institute for Technology in Health Care.
In 2019 The Institute for Technology partnered with the Medical Society of the District of Columbia Foundation (MSDC) for the MSDC project "A Study of Technology’s Impact on the Wellbeing of Physicians in the District of Columbia "the goal was to provide the foundation for the MSDC to create or assist in the creation of treatment programs for the benefit of DC’s physicians, its hospitals, private groups or other practices suffering from burnout
MSDC encourages its members to adopt the best practices identified in the data and promote national policies for other states and practices to adopt them as well. The Healthy Physician Program was initiated.
The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 highlighted the great need for programs focusing on physician well-being. The ITHC is pleased to have renewed the award for expansion of the program and data analysis to assess the program benefits.
The Conway School of Nursing, Catholic University of America
The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 has brought the need for Telehealth services to the forefront previously limited to rural healthcare settings. The ITHC gave a 2020 Award to the Conway School of Nursing to initiate a telehealth course of study for nursing students. Renewal grants have been awarded each year to expand this critical area of nursing education and preparedness to serve in the profession.
"The overarching purpose of this project is to prepare undergraduate BSN and graduate nurse practitioner [NP] students to expertly utilize and advance telehealth as a provider platform in academic and professional practice. A unique focus on the ever-present problem of access-to-care underpins this effort and aligns with the values of the University and the Conway School of Nursing. Today, telehealth is instantly changing the dynamics of provider-patient engagement. The COVID-19 pandemic has rightly peaked the healthcare industry’s interest in this relatively new technology because telehealth effectively disregards the traditional challenges of providing healthcare access to patients living in remote/isolated locations. The faculty at the CSON believe that patient demographics should not result in denying access to health services. Academia must therefore develop creative and useful strategies to educate graduate and undergraduate students to deliver nursing services to patients and families living in remote or isolated locations. Simulation scenarios will be developed to address use of telehealth in multiple locations (home, schools, skilled nursing facilities, long term care facilities, work sites, and primary care clinics) and multiple communication modes (videoconferencing, store and forward, mHealth, and remote monitoring). Clinical scenarios will include BSN-NP intra-professional collaboration and will be disseminated on the Education Hub. "
The Friends of Barnabas (FOB)
2024 Update: Advanced Vision Clinic - 3 Year Project: FOB seeks to advance the care provided in the vision clinic through the integration of the Global Vision 2020 technology. This new technology will permit FOB to build custom prescription eyeglasses in the field for nearly 1,300 adults and children annually. The system exceeds FOB's current capacity in the vision clinic and will improve the quality of care and increase the usability of eyeglasses. It will also increase FOB's ability to identify children will more extensive vision care needs.
Previous Years: Implemented an electronic medical record (EMR) via a rugged backpack Pad for their medical mission work in Honduras. The software allows FOB to track trends, document outcomes, track education impact, and update policies and procedures according to issues identified from data. Ultimately, the software will make both clinic settings more efficient and it will also increase the standard of care offered to patients.” The project was approved and the first year of the subscription was funded.
Follow-up confirmed that they were able to begin the program much earlier than anticipated and began utilizing the software.
Friends of Barnabas also implemented a volunteer training program with Navega Training and Consulting to develop an online training module for its Mountain Medical Team volunteers. Td experience.”
Physicians for Responsible Medicine
Effect of a Dietary Intervention on Insulin Requirements in Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) compares the effects conferred by a low-fat, plant-based dietary intervention and a conventional portion-controlled diet on insulin requirements in T1D, to inspire investigators to reimagine technology as a conduit for research on therapeutics that enable the alleviation of intractable health care challenges.
Hope for Haiti
There is both a shortage of affordable medical providers, as well as available lab testing in Les Cayes, the third largest city in Haiti. Often people, especially women, will put off seeking lab testing until they have an understanding of where to get testing, and the money to pay for testing. Delayed healthcare can cause minor and preventative conditions to advance into chronic, complex and even fatal conditions. Hope for Haiti (HFH) seeks a three-year partnership with ITHC to use technology to improve the care of healthcare delivery to people by increasing the biomedical equipment and supplies available, as well as professional development for Haitian laboratory technicians and laboratory interns at HFH’s Infirmary St Etienne (ISE) in Les Cayes, Haiti. With increased knowledge and medical materials to provide subsidized lab testing, HFH will help people living in the Greater South of Haiti by improving the general health of the population, and concentrating particularly on women’s health through increased access to
specialized testing.