The National Institutes of Health has selected BioMedware for a Technical and Business Assistance (TABA) Needs Assessment Report for the project titled “Software for Geostatistical Smoothing and Joinpoint Regression Modeling of Time Series of Compositional Variables in Epidemiology”.
About The Project
This grant will implement novel methods and software for working with variables that always sum to a specific value (e.g., compositional variables). For example, consider breast cancer stage at diagnosis, which may be early-stage, mid-stage, or late-stage. In a given population of women diagnosed in Washtenaw County in 2023, 27% of the diagnoses might be early-stage, 50% mid-stage, and 23% late-stage. These percentages sum to 100%, representing all of the diagnoses. Unsurprisingly, many variables have this property and are compositional variables; however, few modeling techniques are specifically designed for them.
This grant will develop geospatial modeling methods designed to handle compositional data, beginning with geostatistical interpolation and joinpoint regression.
It turns out that much of the data analyzed in the health and environmental sciences, as well as a host of other fields, are compositional variables. This includes survey data (used in political science, and epidemiology), census data (e.g. demographic variables), and many others. The impact of this project on such a diversity of industries is potentially large, as it will enhance analysts’ ability to accurately depict compositional variables, resulting in more accurate results and improved estimates of uncertainty. Read more about the project and its benefits here.
NIH Technical and Business Assistance Programs
Part of the NIH SEED program is designed to help innovators turn discovery into health, the TABA Needs Assessment provides a third-party, unbiased assessment of a Phase I project’s progress in technical and business areas that are critical to success in the competitive healthcare marketplace.
Conducted by an impartial, external contractor, the Needs Assessment Report will identify strengths and weaknesses of BioMedware’s project across multiple categories, including:
- Intellectual property and barriers to entry
- Market needs and competitive advantage
- Regulatory, manufacturing, and/or clinical plans
- Business model profitability
Expected Benefits of the TABA
BioMedware plans to use the TABA report to assist in customer discovery, which is crucial information that will inform a detailed marketing plan for the commercialization of the products of this project. The grant begins with a kickoff meeting between the TABA team and BioMedware. The team is really looking forward to the value-add the TABA program will give to the commercialization of the Vesta software!