Most impressive and impactful advances in CV diagnostics and therapies came in the last 50 years from CV engineering, including implantable devices and imaging technology. CV engineers are developing next breakthrough technology including tissue engineering and flexible electronics. However, organizational structure of NIH does not have an entity responsible for strategic development of CV engineering. NIBIB does not ...more »

There is a serious need to improve implantable cardiovascular devices to eliminate, or at least substantially reduce, the risk of serious adverse events from occurring to more effectively treat patients.

Can improved catheters, pumps and oxygenators for extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation be developed that will make feasible widespread implementation for refractory in-hospital and out-of-hospital cardiac arrest?

Can mechanical devices be developed that improved chest compression and augment blood flow during CPR compared to manual CPR?

The development of personalized medicine and the increasing amount of information extracted from individual and patients throughout their life is expected to growth significantly. Multiple types of physiological sensors are currently embedded in everyday-life objects and yet their clinical value and their potential to improve health care is not well defined. It seems fundamental that the NIH develops a core research group/ ...more »

How can the NHLBI foster the development of effective tools and methodologies to harness the tsunami of patient-generated health data into a valuable resource for conducting patient-centered research? Some challenges to overcome might include a) how to enable the collaboration of the more traditional clinical scientists with scientists from other disciplines such as informatics or computational and data-enabled science ...more »

The recent Manhattan Research survey noted the increasing proliferation of health monitoring apps, which are accessible on mobile devices. Some experts believe that there are more than 40,000 of them already available. They mostly deal with wellness and fitness. The quality is very uneven and there is uncertainty among physicians which ones should be recommended to their patients.

A great potential benefit exists for the use of smartphone medical apps for medical doctors, patients, and trainees. NHLBI may help support to test and/or develop smartphone apps in clinical studies and medical training.

There is a disconnect between the cardiovascular devices industry and the basic research that is conducted in the field by biomedical engineering researchers. Technological solutions that the industry is converging to are not well informed by the advances in basic translational research. A distinct funding mechanism should be created for fostering such collaborations. To motivate for profit cardiovascular device manufacturers ...more »