LEBANON, N.H. (WCAX) – Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center has received a $27.7 million federal grant targeted to not only increase scientific research in health care but also speed up its implementation.
“Synergy is a center that is devoted to translational science,” said Steven L. Bernstein, DHMC’s chief research officer.
Dartmouth’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute turns discoveries made in the lab into real-world solutions in the hospital room. Bernstein says the National Institutes of Health grant will allow the medical center to fund more projects, train more researchers, and strengthen relationships with partners in the region, including the VA and the UVM Medical Center.
“The work that we do at Synergy, ourselves and consequently with our partners, really applies to people across the country no matter where they live, whether they live in urban areas or rural areas. And yeah, we have a particular focus on rural populations,” he said.
Synergy will also increase ongoing work to track health outcomes at the bedside, leading to more research on particular diseases. “We are very focused on this idea of a learning health system, where data collected during the course of care can be used for multiple purposes,” said Anna Tosteson, a DHMC researcher. She says the goal is to develop new methods and technology to make medicine more efficient while improving outcomes for both the young and the old. “Optimizing care delivery, reaching people who may have had challenges in access to care.”
“If we are good at what we do, if we succeed, we will develop tools, devices, diagnostics, medicine that will help people with all sorts of conditions,” Bernstein
The grant will be administered over the next several years. Dartmouth Health is one of 60 similar translational science centers across the country.