ANN ARBOR – BioMedware, a software research and development firm, was awarded $100,000 by the National Cancer Institute for a pilot project to develop new approaches to health analysis in this case the study of cancer outcomes in minority and medically underserved populations.
The project – Geostatistical software for space-time analysis and detection of cancer disparities won a 12-month phase 1 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant, for initial proof of concept research. Project consultants will include Cynthia Brewer of Penn State University, who is an expert in cartographic visualization, and David Schottenfeld of the University of Michigan, an expert in cancer epidemiology.
Since 1995, BioMedware has received more than $6.4 million in grants to develop new methods and software for the spatial analysis and modeling of disease. This research has resulted in three commercial software products, now available from BioMedwares commercialization partner, TerraSeer.
Geoffrey Jacquez, BioMedwares President, said the study of cancer outcomes in minority populations is notoriously difficult because of the small numbers problem, which makes estimation of cancer rates problematic. A traditional approach to this problem is to censor or exclude data based on small population sizes. But, this completely interferes with the analysis of minority health patterns, particularly geographic patterns as minority populations are often concentrated in urban islands surrounded by regions with lower population. BioMedware has developed techniques to account for the statistical instability created by the noise in small populations, and this new software will enable new research into spatial, ethnic, and socioeconomic patterns in cancer data.
At the end of the phase I funding, BioMedware will produce prototype software to evaluate the feasibility and usefulness of commercial software for health disparity analysis. At that time, BioMedware will apply for additional funding (up to $750K) for two additional years of research.
