2024 RAISE Health Seed Grants

Watch a recording of the information session hosted by the RAISE Health team on September 16, 2024.

Call for RAISE Health Grant Proposals

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) technology offer unprecedented opportunities to improve health and medicine, from accelerating biomedical research to strengthening care delivery and patient outcomes. However, in a field as sensitive as medicine, it is vital that the pursuit of these aims is approached responsibly and with a commitment to maximizing the benefits for all.

Launched in the summer of 2023, RAISE Health (Responsible AI for Safe and Equitable Health) is a joint initiative between Stanford Medicine and the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) to guide the responsible use of AI across biomedical research, education, and patient care. RAISE Health was established to serve as a go-to platform for AI resources and insights, share frameworks for ethical AI development and use, and convene multidisciplinary innovators, experts, and stakeholder groups to solve the field’s most pressing challenges. 

As part of this mission, RAISE Health is establishing a new seed grant program to support research and education program proposals designed to advance responsible AI innovation in medicine. We are particularly interested in research proposals that advance evaluation methods for fair algorithms in healthcare or investigate ethical or legal implications of AI in healthcare. We are also interested in proposals for education programs that help patients, care providers, and researchers navigate AI advances. 

These projects should aim to build the trustworthiness of AI systems, facilitate the broader acceptance and effective integration of responsible AI technologies in medicine, and drive improvements in population health by ensuring that all communities benefit from AI innovations. The RAISE Health 2024 Seed Grants expect to offer 5 one-year grants up to $100,000 each.

We define responsible, safe, and equitable AI in health and medicine as:

• Responsible: Responsible AI in health and medicine involves creating and deploying AI systems that are transparent, fair, and accountable. These systems should prioritize patient privacy, data security, and be designed to mitigate biases that could lead to disparities in healthcare outcomes. Additionally, responsible AI focuses on clinically benefiting the health of the patient and improving the clinician’s decision making process, ensuring that AI serves as a supportive tool in clinical care.
• Safe: Safe AI focuses on the reliability and accuracy of AI systems, ensuring they can be trusted in healthcare settings and perform consistently under the broad range of conditions in which they will be used. By fostering safe and ethical AI, we aim to build trust among healthcare providers and patients, facilitating the broader acceptance and effective integration of AI technologies.
• Equitable: Equitable AI ensures that these technologies are used in ways that respect human rights and societal values, benefiting the well-being of the community as a whole. This approach not only advances the deployment of AI but also drives improvements in population health by ensuring that all communities benefit from these innovations. Equitable AI ensures that members of groups under-represented in biomedical research receive high-quality, evidence-based care that is accurately reflected in AI tools, thereby addressing disparities and promoting fairness in healthcare outcomes.

Note: HAI is simultaneously in the process of reviewing proposals for a separate funding opportunity, HAI Seed Research Grants, which are a general call for proposals for up to $75,000 for one year. While researchers can submit to both opportunities, you are unlikely to win both. We ask that the proposal submitted to the RAISE Health seed grant clearly describe alignment with this opportunity.

Frequently asked questions can be found here.

Submission Guidelines:

Proposals must be submitted by September 30, 2024, 11:59PM. Each proposal should be 4 pages maximum (single-spaced, 11 point, 1 inch margins) and include:

• Page 1: 
  • A cover page with the project title, lead investigator(s), project team, and contact information
• Pages 2-3: 
  • Background, problem statement, and research idea
  • Description of how research idea innovates over existing methods/applications and brings together diverse disciplines
  • Previous findings/results related to earlier phases of this research (if relevant)
  • Detail problem solving approach, including 3-5 key milestones and expected completion dates
  • Budget plan and justification
• Page 4: 
  • Ethics and Society Review (ESR) statement: (one page PDF, single-spaced, 11 point, 1 inch margins). The ESR process aims to create space for project teams to stop and think about the potential ethical dilemmas and societal challenges that could follow from their work. As part of the ESR process, our panel may ask for more detail in response. Please utilize the ESR Statement Instructions for details about:
    • Typical ESR statement content and process
    • ESR statement template

Selection Criteria:

Proposals will be reviewed based on:

• Innovation and Impact: Potential to introduce novel ideas and create significant advancements in healthcare AI, demonstrating a clear pathway to outcomes.
• Alignment with RAISE Health objectives: Relevance to one or more of the following objectives: 1) enhancing clinical care outcomes through responsible integration of AI, 2) accelerating research to solve the biggest challenges in health and medicine, 3) educating patients, care providers and researchers to navigate AI advances.
• Feasibility and Methodology: Soundness and practicality of the research design and approach.
• Multidisciplinary: Extent to which the proposal integrates multiple scientific disciplines.
• Team: Qualifications and expertise of the team to execute the proposal, particularly in relation to the specific domain(s) of the proposed research.
• Sustainability and Scalability: Likeliness of research to continue following the seed grant period through additional funding opportunities or subsequent work informed by project outcomes.
• Selected projects will undergo an ethics and society review. Please review the ESR Statement Instructions for more information.

Key Dates:

• Applications open: August 19, 2024
• Proposal submission deadline: September 30, 2024
• Notification of funding decisions: December 2024