DiSomma Foundation’s major gift grows Jump ARCHES’ endowment

OSF HealthCare and the University of Illinois atUrbana-Champaign’s (U of I) Grainger College of Engineering are growing theirpartnership to create the future of community wellness and health care byharnessing creativity and applying it to social and behavioral health problems,many of which are key to improving health and wellness in all communities – urbanand rural, well-resourced and underserved.

The expansion of Jump ARCHES (Applied Research for CommunityHealth through Engineering and Simulation), a part of OSF Innovation, includesa $25-million gift from the DiSomma Family Foundation to the endowment poolheld within the OSF HealthCare Foundation, an additional $12.5-millioncommitment from the OSF HealthCare Foundation, and the equivalent of $12.5 millionin endowment support from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

The expanded collaboration will include The Grainger Collegeof Engineering and for the first time, it’ll bring in the Center for Social andBehavioral Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Dr. John Vozenilek, vice president and chief medical officerfor Jump Simulation, says the larger collaboration will intentionally focus onthe greatest challenges with solutions funneled through an academic center thathas expertise in best practices and behavioral research.

“With this engineering know-how and device developmentknow-how and social science know-how, we’re going to be able to createsolutions that are not just good ideas, but are creating great impacts in ourcommunities.”

The Jump ARCHES expansion will allow for an increase inyearly grants from $2 million to $4 million to engage health providers and U ofI researchers to improve community health and patient care through supportivemedical devices, robots, artificial intelligence and process improvements.

Kesh Kesavades, the director of the Health Care EngineeringSystems Center (HCESC) at the U of I, says construction is underway on a 2,500-square-footLife Home on the south side of the Champaign-Urbana campus. There, researcherswill test devices and place potential users in the home to examine how remotemonitors and in-home virtual assistants can help a growing population of BabyBoomers age gracefully and safely in their homes.

“Which can assist people living in the home for maybeproviding them with medication at the right time or helping them reach out topeople for getting their groceries for example,” said Kesavades who has alreadybegun preliminary research in this area.

With expanded research money available through Jump ARCHES,researchers and clinicians will create and test cloud-based systems and sensorsto measure health vitals such as body mass index, body temperature and bloodpressure. Algorithms could check if there is an immediate need to notify adoctor or the user’s emergency contacts.

For the first time, Jump ARCHES will focus some research onhuman factors that influence whether people will actually adapt to technologyoptions to help them age in place, including concerns about personal privacy.

“So eventually this becomes useable so people find it as apart of their life, not as something they find is interfering with their life –it should be naturally as a part of your life,” according to Kesavades.

One big initiative will tackle the opioid crisis includingunderlying conditions that if treated well, could prevent opioid addiction.Vozenilek says technology could also be used to predict people at risk foropioid dependence.

“Artificial intelligence can play a role and there are manyother techniques that will help us that aren’t strictly technical,” accordingto Vozenilek. “There are many techniques we’re going to be bringing online thathave to do with human-to-human outreach through community health workers forexample.”

For rural residents who don’t have easy access tofacility-based care, researchers will use ethnographic research to understandthe “why” behind daily behavior and structure solutions that’ll work for the mindsetof certain health care consumers. Urban areas could also be impacted by dataanalytics that’ll examine by zip code, areas where people are at the highestrisk for barriers to good health including food insecurity, transportation and evenloneliness, which is at epidemic levels among older Americans.

Kesavades and OSF Foundation President Tom Hammerton believethis endowment is the largest in the world dedicated to health careengineering. Hammerton says OSF HealthCare’s mission of serving with the greatestcare and love means finding resources to transform and radically improve healthcare delivery using a collaborative approach and that’s not always easy.

“Philanthropy can break down that barrier. The stipulationsof the gift, as crafted, have incentivized us to collaborate in an appropriateway,” said Hammerton.

The DiSomma Family Foundation has contributed a total of $85million toward efforts to transform health care, and Jump ARCHES grants havefunded 34 ground-breaking projects over the last five years, including a newprocess for 3D bio-printing to develop the next generation of printed heartsfor training and pre-operative planning as well as a virtual reality skilltrainer for training medical students how to intubate patients. The VR trainer isnow being used by medical institutions in the U.S. and abroad.

Jump ARCHES’ expanded efforts will also contribute to thenew Discovery Partners Institute and Illinois Innovation Network, statewideinitiatives to accelerate innovation, economic growth and job creation.

“It goes well beyond our geography. This is abouttransforming health care minimum in the United States, ultimately the world andwe’re gonna be in that space,” said Hammerton. “We’re shooting for the moon.”

Through a new OSF-led Peoria Innovation Hub, Jump ARCHESresearchers and clinicians will find additional support and expertise to driveadvancements to solve complex challenges in health and wellness, agriculture,automation and food quality and safety.