Key Dates

Related Announcements

PA-20-195 - NIH Exploratory/Developmental Research Project Grant (Parent R21 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)

PA-22-176 - PHS 2022-2 Omnibus Solicitation of the NIH, CDC and FDA for Small Business Innovation Research Grant Applications (Parent SBIR [R43/R44] Clinical Trial Not Allowed)

PA-22-178 - PHS 2022-2 Omnibus Solicitation of the NIH for Small Business Technology Transfer Grant Applications (Parent STTR [R41/R42] Clinical Trial Not Allowed)

Issued by

National Eye Institute (NEI)

Purpose

Purpose

The purpose of this Notice of Special Interest (NOSI) is to inform potential applicants that the National Eye Institute (NEI) is interested in supporting research to develop innovative informatics and data science methods, algorithms, and tools to improve data acquisition, analysis, visualization, annotation, integration, and interpretation. The emphasis will be on innovation and its potential impact on vision research, including discovery biology, population studies, as well as clinical and translational research.

Background

The 21st century has seen major innovation and progress in information technology that have led to an explosive growth in available biological and biomedical data. The field of ophthalmology and visual sciences has been one of the early adopters of artificial intelligence within the medical field. This provides important opportunities for new discoveries and, ultimately, for realizing the goal of precision medicine. At the same time, it confronts researchers, including bench biologists and clinicians, with significant challenges to access data, analyze data, and ultimately transform discovery into new knowledge and clinical practice. These challenges are especially prominent in the field of vision research where the complexity and heterogeneity of diseases results in complex data sets, management, and analyses that create significant barriers to knowledge discovery and dissemination.

Remarkable progress in biomedical informatics supporting vision research has been made in recent years. The emerging use of cloud computing to support big data analysis; the application of machine learning and other artificial intelligence methods used in vision image analysis; and the improvement in mathematical models have all had fundamental impacts on vision research. However, the use of informatics in everyday research remains a challenge for a variety of reasons including the low availability of user-focused tools, algorithms, and methods necessary to improve data acquisition, analysis, visualization, annotation, integration, and interpretation.

Recognizing these challenges, the NEI encourages projects that focus on the development of innovative technologies, algorithms, tools, and methods to improve the data acquisition, analysis, visualization, annotation, integration, and interpretation in vision research.  

Research Objective

The mission of the National Eye Institute (NEI) is to eliminate vision loss and improve quality of life through vision research. In 2021, the NEI published the National Eye Institute Strategic Plan: Vision for the Future (2021-2025).  This strategic plan features NEI areas of emphasis that are dedicated to public health and health disparities research. To achieve the goal of eliminating vision loss and improving quality of life, there is a critical need for developing infrastructure and incentives to support data sharing and harmonization across vision science, improving generalizability and real-world applicability of artificial intelligence systems for ocular care, and creating novel methods for integrating cross-modality data for analysis (e.g., clinical, imaging, omics).

This NOSI aims to stimulate the development of innovative informatics technologies, algorithms, tools, and methods to leverage data science to facilitate transformative research for improving vision health and understanding of the visual system. Specific areas of research interest include but are not limited to the following:  

• Develop new and innovative analytical and software platforms to improve the ability of researchers to process complex samples and data types to facilitate data analysis, interpretation, and integration.
• Advance uniform standards for data collection to improve data interoperability, integration, curation, and analysis, and to enhance data sharing and reproducibility.
• Develop new method(s) for machine learning or deep learning to improve cross-modality data analysis (e.g., electronic health record, imaging, and genomics data), or to explore ways to train models using federated learning.
• Develop innovative data management and sharing platforms that can be widely implemented by research labs (including use of cloud resources) to facilitate data sharing and to promote data integration with commonly used large data repositories.
• Create new data acquisition methods or software for laboratory equipment and wearable devices.

To be successful, there must be a clear rationale for how the proposed informatics technologies, tools, methods, and/or algorithms are novel and how they will benefit vision research in support of NEI’s mission to eliminate vision loss and improve quality of life. Applications submitted in response to this NOSI are required to include data management and resource sharing plans for how data, tools, algorithms, and methods generated by the supported projects will be shared and made widely available to the broader research community.

Non-Responsive Projects:

• Projects proposing a significant level of data generation and/or data analysis using existing tools and algorithms will not be considered responsive to this funding opportunity.
• Applicants proposing projects focused on secondary data analysis of existing clinical datasets should submit to funding opportunity, PAR-22-141- NEI Research Grant for Vision Related Secondary Data Analysis (R21 Clinical Trial Not Allowed).

Application and Submission Information

This notice applies to due dates on or after June 16, 2023, and subsequent receipt dates through February 16, 2026. 

Applications for this initiative must be submitted using one of the following funding opportunity announcements (FOAs) or any reissues of these announcement through the expiration date of this notice.

PA-20-195 - NIH Exploratory/Developmental Research Project Grant (Parent R21 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)
PA-22-176 - PHS 2022-2 Omnibus Solicitation of the NIH, CDC and FDA for Small Business Innovation Research Grant Applications (Parent SBIR [R43/R44] Clinical Trial Not Allowed)
PA-22-178 - PHS 2022-2 Omnibus Solicitation of the NIH for Small Business Technology Transfer Grant Applications (Parent STTR [R41/R42] Clinical Trial Not Allowed)

All instructions in the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide and the funding opportunity announcement used for submission must be followed, with the following additions: 

For funding consideration, applicants must include “NOT-EY-23-005” (without quotation marks) in the Agency Routing Identifier field (box 4B) of the SF424 R&R form. Applications without this information in box 4B will not be considered for this initiative. 

Applications non-responsive to the terms of this NOSI will not be considered for this NOSI initiative.

Inquiries

James Gao, Ph.D.
National Eye Institute (NEI)
Telephone: 301-594-6074
Email: james.gao@nih.gov