Funding Opportunity

The Center for Advancing Point of Care Technologies (CAPCaT) in Heart, Lung, Blood, and Sleep disorders (U54HL143541) announces the 2026 solicitation of grant applications focused on developing, adapting, or validating point of care technologies that can be rapidly applied to heart, lung, blood, or sleep disorders. While meritorious applications from across the Heart, Lung, Blood and Sleep disease spectrum are welcome, CAPCaT will place a special emphasis this year on those point-of-care technologies that facilitate the provision of HLBS care outside of the traditional brick-and-mortar hospital context (e.g., hospital at home, paramedicine, remote patient monitoring). There is also an additional interest in projects that incorporate complementary and integrative health approaches. We anticipate funding up to four awards of up to $100,000 over 12 months.

About CAPCaT

CAPCaT was established with support from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) as well as the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH). Our core mission is to support development and testing of promising point of care technologies that can be rapidly deployed to enhance the diagnosis, monitoring, management, and prevention of heart, lung, blood, or sleep disorders (NHLBI), with an additional interest in projects that incorporate complementary and integrative health approaches (NCCIH). We are a member of the Point of Care Technologies Research Network. For a listing of prior successful grant awardees, please see our website.

Areas of Focus

This national solicitation for CAPCaT’s pilot funding aims to attract research applications focused broadly on accelerating the development and clinical testing of point of care technologies for heart, lung, blood, and sleep disorders, with a special emphasis on point-of-care technologies that facilitate the provision of HLBS care outside of the traditional brick-and-mortar hospital context (e.g., hospital at home, paramedicine, remote patient monitoring). We are also interested in technologies that attempt to address healthcare workforce shortages by using artificial intelligence to augment skillsets of community health workers, paramedics, technicians, doulas, home health and skilled nursing staff, respiratory therapists, care coordinators,  and other frontline healthcare workers involved in home-based community-based or remote HLBS care. 

We conducted clinical needs assessments that identified chronic cardiovascular diseases, coagulopathies and other blood disorders, sleep disorders and obstructive lung diseases such as Asthma, COPD, and Cystic Fibrosis as the top conditions for which POC technologies could help diagnose, monitor, better manage, or prevent condition(s) across the Heart, Lung, Blood, and Sleep spectrum. Accuracy and ease with which the technology could be incorporated into clinical workflows were identified as the most important POC characteristics to healthcare providers. 

Applications that seek to address the conditions listed above, that have the desirable characteristics listed above, will be given special consideration. We are particularly interested in the development of disease diagnostics and monitoring devices, wearable technologies, mobile applications, and other tools to improve health in rural communities and those with limited access to conventional primary and secondary healthcare. We would like technologies to help address healthcare workforce shortages by augmenting the existing workforce, ideally by “upskilling” or improving the diagnostic capabilities of healthcare workers (e.g., paramedics). We are also interested in the development of tools and technologies that will address barriers to uptake of the implementation and dissemination of evidence-based interventions for HLBS conditions, including those that fit into existing reimbursement mechanisms. Taken together, these areas of focus will be the basis for this funding round.

CAPCaT has supported numerous projects advancing innovative technologies across the heart, lung, blood, and sleep space. The bridge graphic above illustrates CAPCaT’s system-level approach to translating innovation into impact by connecting innovators, institutions, key stakeholders, caregivers, and patients. This model enables care to come full circle, from early development to clinical implementation, by supporting technologies that are adopted within health systems and delivered directly to patients. Through this integrated approach, CAPCaT accelerates solutions that improve access, efficiency, and quality of care.

One example is Wellinks, a 2024/25 CAPCaT-funded project focused on tele-pulmonary rehabilitation for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a condition affecting more than 16 million people in the U.S. and associated with frequent exacerbations, hospitalizations, and declining quality of life. Building on earlier feasibility work in home-based COPD management using digital technology, the CAPCaT pilot evaluated real-world outcomes through claims analysis of participating patients. Results demonstrated meaningful clinical impact: participants were less likely to be hospitalized, experienced a 61% decrease in the odds of 30-day readmission, had fewer Emergency Department visits, and, when hospitalized, had shorter inpatient stays. These outcomes highlight how CAPCaT-supported innovation can expand access to effective therapies, such as pulmonary rehabilitation, that are traditionally underutilized due to structural and logistical barriers.

CAPCaT’s success is also driven by the strength of its Administrative Core and leadership team, which consistently guides projects from concept through implementation and scale. Leaders such as Apurv Soni, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Director of the Program in Digital Medicine at UMass Chan Medical School, have played a critical role in advancing and integrating digital health programs within UMass Memorial Health and partner systems. By bringing deep scientific, clinical, and operational expertise, the CAPCaT leadership team ensures that funded projects receive the strategic guidance needed to navigate clinical, regulatory, and market pathways supporting innovations in achieving sustainable adoption and broad healthcare impact.

Areas of focus related to heart, lung, blood, and sleep disorders

 Technologies that integrate into existing paramedicine, remote monitoring, mobile integrated health, hospital at home, or skilled nursing at home clinical environments (e.g., a system that would enable paramedics to monitor QT real-time to support initiation of QT-prolonging anti-arrhythmics in a home environment). 

• POC technologies well-suited for use by minimally trained caregivers and healthcare providers in the home setting that accurately measure health behaviors, including activity, falls, treatment adherence, integrate them into the health record, and enhance quality of care.
• POC technologies that aid in the effective in-home or remote management of cardiovascular disease by identifying acute decompensations (i.e., remote detection of an arrhythmia, severe hypertension, or acute heart failure decompensation, thereby avoiding hospital admission) in specific populations (e.g., those in rural areas).
• “Smart” POC devices that both monitor physiology and use artificial intelligence and algorithms to assist, adjust, or intervene automatically to treat acute complications of cardiovascular disease (e.g., a heart failure monitor tied to automated diuretic dosing adjustments to reduce acute heart failure worsening).
• POC technologies that help with the effective in-home or remote management of pulmonary disorders, such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), including emphysema, pulmonary hypertension, and certain types of interstitial lung disease; where point-of-care technologies like peak flow meters, pulse oximeters, digital symptom diaries, and mobile apps can help patients monitor symptoms, manage medications, and communicate with their healthcare providers remotely, facilitating timely interventions and better disease control.
• Technologies that can monitor or enhance physiological responses to therapies (e.g., continuous positive airway pressure devices) at the point of care for the treatment of sleep disorders.
• POC technologies that help better remotely manage patients at risk of bleeding or thrombosis, including key groups such as those treated with anticoagulants for venous thromboembolism, pulmonary embolism, or atrial fibrillation.
• POC devices that define physiologic, phenotypic, or molecular characteristics to predict HLBS outcomes and, when applied in clinical studies, predict differential responses to therapy in individuals and in different populations with HLBS disorders (e.g., sickle cell disease, heart failure).
• POC technologies that help differentiate patients with atherosclerotic heart disease who will progress to myocardial infarction or sudden death from those with stable disease.
• Mobile health (mHealth) and telehealth/telemedicine technologies and apps for improving communication among health care providers and between patients, families, and physicians and healthcare providers, medication adherence, diagnosis, monitoring, evaluation, medical management, screening, tracking, and treatment in community settings and rural and remote locations. Examples include tools that augment communication through AI-enabled or large language model (LLM) based chatbots to support patient education, triage, follow-up, and care coordination between providers and patients.
• POC technologies to improve the diagnosis, monitoring, or management of HLBS disorders among pregnant and postpartum individuals, with a focus on addressing maternal health in populations at higher risk yet with limited access to traditional health care services. Applications may include wearable or mobile devices for remote monitoring of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, sleep apnea, peripartum cardiomyopathy, pulmonary complications, or coagulopathies, and should emphasize integration into home or community settings to enhance timely intervention and reduce hospitalizations. Projects that leverage artificial intelligence to support community health workers serving high risk populations are encouraged.

Areas of focus related to complementary and integrative health

Complementary and Integrative Health approaches include nutritional (e.g., special diets, dietary supplements, herbs, probiotics, and microbial-based therapies), psychological (e.g., meditation, hypnosis, music-based interventions), physical (e.g., acupuncture, massage, chiropractic manipulation, other force-based manipulations, or devices related to these approaches), or a combination of psychological and physical (e.g., yoga, tai chi, dance therapies, or some forms of art therapies).POC devices or applications that can monitor the dose, intensity, duration and/or frequency of complementary and integrative health approaches employed by the patients at the point of care.

• POC devices or applications that can monitor the dose, intensity, duration and/or frequency of complementary and integrative health approaches employed by the patients at the point of care.
• Solutions that integrate multiple signals into a signal output to measure the effectiveness of complementary and integrative health approaches, such as yoga and meditation, especially across HLBS metric (e.g., blood pressure, sleep). 
• Development and testing of mobile health technology or nonmobile technology and methods to monitor or quantify pain, physical and/or emotional well-being, breathing, sleep, or whole person health. 
• POC devices or applications that use Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) to understand the effects of multicomponent interventions on multiple physiological and biological systems to monitor or quantify physical and/or emotional well-being, breathing, or sleep.
• POC technologies to improve biological and physiological outcome measures for use in clinical studies of complementary or integrative health approaches.
• POC technologies that can objectively measure pain or functional limitations due to pain, which would be treated by complementary and integrative health approaches, at home or in primary care facilities.
• Virtual reality (VR) systems that use therapy and other behavioral methods to help with pain reduction.
• Development and validation of gaming and virtual reality technologies for the accurate assessment of adherence and/or fidelity to the use of mind and body practices and interventions.
• POC technologies that can monitor symptoms, health related quality of life, or physiological responses to complementary and integrative health approaches at POC for the treatment of pain, mild to moderate depression, anxiety, or other symptomatic conditions, especially if they are applied across the heart, lung, blood, sleep disease spectrum.
• POC technologies that can objectively assess or monitor stress, pain, sleep dysfunction, depression, or anxiety, which would be treated or managed by complementary and integrative health approaches, at home or  in clinical environments.

Point of Care Technologies Performance Criteria 

We advise applicants to consider the following performance criteria for their point of care technologies: 

• Voice of the End User – Patients: accuracy, immediate result availability, and out-of-pocket cost were identified as important POC characteristics by patients who participated in our needs assessment surveys. Applicants must understand the use case of the technology in the context of where the product will be used. 
• Voice of the End User – Healthcare providers: Accuracy, cost, and ease with which the technology could be incorporated into existing workflows were identified as important POC characteristics by surveyed healthcare providers.
• Ease of Use: Ease of use is essential to successful implementation of POC test devices. In the case of instrumented devices, the user interface with the device should be designed to ensure regulatory compliance under the clinical laboratory improvement amendment (CLIA-88) with minimal requirements for intervention by the operator. Results readout must not be subjective but easy to read using color change, readout, digital or graphic formats.
• Analytic Performance: As a rule, the performance of POC devices should be equivalent to central laboratory instruments regarding analytical accuracy, reportable range, and precision. Analytical time should be kept to a minimum (less than 5 minutes for common chemistry analytes and less than 15 minutes   for immunoassays). Should a predicate device not exist, published preliminary data can be used to evaluate performance.
• Workflow: The POC technology should not require clinicians or staff to significantly alter the way they care for and treat patients in their practice setting and should ideally integrate into existing electronic systems. However, technologies can (and should) consider novel care paradigms, including hospital at home and remote monitoring, as these are 2026 areas of focus.
• Workforce scope: Use of technologies, including AI, hold promise for “up-skilling” medical professionals. Technology developers should therefore detail how new provider types (e.g., a community health worker) would be trained to utilize novel technologies that expand their scope of practice. Regulatory and other reimbursement considerations (including loss of reimbursement for other providers) should be considered and addressed, where appropriate.
• Result Availability: Results must be available in the home, at the hospital bedside or during an office visit (typically 10- to 20-minute result availability), so that decisions can be made in a timely fashion based on the test results. Technologies should consider the education level (and training) of the intended user when deciding how to report results.
• Reducing Operator Errors: The device should have built-in software safeguards to ensure proper operation and reduce common errors such as lock-out of untrained or minimally trained operators, lock-out for failed quality control (or failure to perform quality control) and lock-out of expired reagents.
• Sample Types: Samples that do not require a trained phlebotomist should be used, such as capillary finger-stick whole blood or saliva.
• Storage of Consumables: All consumables, including reagents, calibrators, and quality control materials, should be stored at room temperature. The minimal shelf life should be 6 months to 1 year.
• Device Footprint: POC devices should be designed to have as small a footprint as possible. Small benchtops or handheld devices are optimal.
• Information Connectivity: All instrumented POC devices should be capable of being interfaced to the electronic medical record system. The ability to transmit data using a bidirectional wireless interface is most optimal.
• Security of intellectual property: Clearly articulated security of intellectual property will be considered most strongly (maybe issued or pending patents, or, for software, trademarks, or copyrights).
• Cost: Solutions that significantly reduce the cost of testing relative to the existing standard of care are encouraged.

Award Amount

Direct Costs: Up to $100,000 

Indirect Costs: Reimbursement for indirect costs is covered at the federally negotiated indirect cost rate of the institution where the project study is performed, if applicable; otherwise, an indirect rate of 10% will be used. 

Grant Term

12 months. No-cost extensions may be awarded at discretion of NIH/CAPCaT.

Grant Requirements 

• The awardee must provide a just-in-time update about their company and study in a timely manner (e.g., within 1-2 weeks) should they be selected for potential funding
• The awardee must submit monthly reports on trial progress (including any adverse events)
• The awardee must participate in the CAPCaT kickoff and showcase events

Grant Recommendations

• The awardee (or a team designee) should participate in the I-Corps program run by CAPCaT
• The awardee (or a team designee) should receive pitch coaching from CAPCaT, if available
• The awardee (or a team designee) should participate in the POCTRN national meeting

CAPCaT Resources Leveraged by Awardees 

CAPCaT makes adjunct resources available to awardees and other interested point of care technology researchers. These include: 

• NIH resources, such as the I-Corps program and the CAPCaT independent Data Safety Monitoring Board 
• Access to the Point of Care Technology Resource Network (POCTRN) 
• The rich technology and business development resources of our Massachusetts Medical Device Development Center (M2D2)
• Clinical translation and validation expertise 
• A technology development core
• Statistical expertise through the UMass Quantitative Methods Core
• CAPCaT’s annual Showcase event featuring: 
  • opportunities for awardees to receive 1:1 pitch coaching from NIH experts. 
  • exposure to large strategic investors, other entrepreneurs, and students 
  • expert panelists presenting best practices for seeking large strategic investment. 
  • presentations by representatives from the NIH’s small business programs about funding opportunities and tips and best practices for small businesses.

Grant Award Review Criteria 

To be considered for an award, applicants must possess secure intellectual property rights. This includes regulatory plans for the hardware and software used in the technology. Applicants must be familiar with the relevant FDA guidance regarding digital health products. Beyond that, the scientific merits of each application will be reviewed by a panel comprised of experts in clinical care, engineering, and business/technology commercialization. Applicants will be invited to submit full proposals based on their scientific merit, programmatic balance, geographic balance, and technology maturity level. An independent panel will score all applications for scientific merit and the CAPCaT team will make further programmatic decisions regarding selection of awardees based upon the application’s scientific merits, the alignment of the project with the focus of the Center, the potential impact of the technology being developed, the feasibility of the approach, and the adequacy of the plan that is articulated for the protections of human subjects and data safety monitoring. 

The evaluation criteria used to review applications includes

• Significance: Does the project address a significant medical need?
• Scientific Basis: Is there a sound scientific basis presented (including preliminary data) that supports the technology and the proposed research? 
• Responsiveness to the CAPCaT/NIH Areas of Interest: Is the project designed to accelerate the refinement and clinical testing of point of care technologies for heart, lung, blood, and sleep disorders? Is the project designed to improve the diagnosis, monitoring, prevention and management of heart, lung, blood, and sleep disorders or other related symptoms that may incorporate complementary and integrative health approaches? Does the project address one of the areas of special focus identified above? Does the technology under development include one or more of the desirable characteristics mentioned above that will accelerate rapid adoption into clinical practice?
• Technology Performance: Reviewers will be asked to review the Technology Performance Criteria above. Is the project at a “late stage” of development (defined as ready for clinical validation or prototype refinement)? Projects proposing prototype development or preclinical studies are not in scope. Later-stage technologies that are closer to deployment will be given priority. 
• Feasibility: Does the scientific team have the transdisciplinary expertise to move the project forward (i.e., engineering, usability testing, behavioral aspects of health, clinician engagement, statistical expertise)? Are all human subject regulatory procedures (approved IRB protocol, current human subjects training certification, project registered as a clinical trial) complete so that the project can start in a timely way? Is it highly likely that the proposed science can be accomplished with the award and time allotted?
• Expertise: Do one or more members of the applicant team have expertise in population/public health and implementation science? 
• Implementation science: In the application, has the applicant team considered / addressed implementation science metrics and outcomes such as acceptability, adoption, appropriateness, fidelity, penetration, and sustainability?
• Accessibility: Does the applicant plan to make the technology accessible to all people with the condition it is designed to diagnose, manage, or treat? 
• Innovation: Does the proposed technology transform patient outcomes or how patient care is delivered? (i.e., a new Point of care that enables diagnosis/treatment in the home of a patient who would otherwise have had to go to the clinic or hospital for the diagnosis/treatment?) 
• Intellectual Property and Development Plan: Secure intellectual property rights are required for the award and should be clearly outlined in the application. This includes regulatory plans for the hardware and software used in technology. Applicants must be familiar with the relevant FDA guidance regarding digital health products. Has the team developing technology met with the appropriate bodies to secure intellectual property and designation as an investigational device? Has the team acquired a 510k exemption? Has a path to FDA approval or clearance been identified and is it clearly articulated? Is there a patent or license that has been submitted or secured in the US or overseas? 
• Consumer Costs and Commercialization Strategy: What is the commercialization strategy? Does the strategy have the potential to reduce healthcare costs for patients and/or payors? 
• Environment: Do the study team and/or company have an environment that is conducive to success? Has there been outside investment in the company? 

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