UMass Amherst and Brigham and Women’s Hospital have just announced a new collaborative Center with a goal to improve in-home care for aging adults and patients with Alzheimer’s disease. The Massachusetts AI and Technology Center for Connected Care in Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease (MassAITC) aims to apply groundbreaking research and innovation to real world problems associated with in-home patient care. The center is meant to be a research accelorator– to bring projects that are still in the lab and transition them to the field. The $20 million grant over 5 years awarded to MassAITC, is funded by the National Institute on Aging which is a part of the National Institute of Health.

Co-leaders Deepak Ganesan, Professor in Computer and Information Sciences, Niteesh Choudry, director of the Center for Healthcare Delivery Sciences in Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Med, and Benjamin Marlin, Associate Professor in the College of Computer and Information Sciences, are excited to use the flagship campus’ advanced expertise in AI to develop better care for in-home patients. With the impressive core facilities in the Institute for Applied Life Sciences on campus, the Center will be bringing extensive expertise, patient cohorts, and resources from other partner institutions across the state. Among them, Mass General Hospital, Brandeis University, Northeastern University, and Harvard will be contributing to research in MassAITC.

There are gaps in home healthcare that are directly associated with at-home technologies that do not fit the specific needs of Alzheimer’s patients and older adults–the collaborative nature of the Center will aim to address those discrepancies. Specifically, the development of remote delivery technology and AI-sensing technology geared towards older and Alzheimer’s patients where they are. This will be done using interdisciplinary research merging the perspectives of patients, caregivers, clinicians, and behavioral scientists which will then inform the work of experts in MassAITC in wearable and contactless sensing, AI, and machine learning.