Regional Autonomous Patient Safety (RAPS) Seed Grant Program Established

The Jewish Healthcare Foundation's Distribution Committee (JHF) approved a $300,000 one-year grant to the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative (PRHI) to support patient safety research and development in the region via the second phase of the Regional Autonomous Patient Safety (RAPS) initiative.

PRHI will use the grant funding to create a $200,000 Seed Grant Program to provide early-stage grants to multidisciplinary Research & Development teams, start-ups or tech companies in the Pittsburgh region that are developing, testing, or adopting an autonomous solution to prevent medical errors and organizing a series of "Patient Safety R&D Salons" with multidisciplinary research teams, providers, payers, and tech companies in the region in response to the ideas raised during breakout sessions at the RAPS Launch Event.

The Seed Grant Program will begin accepting proposals on June 1, 2023 with funding being awarded based on the extent to which the autonomous patient safety solution is aligned with what healthcare providers need to work in a safe environment and the extent to which it is aligned with federal funding opportunities. More details will be forthcoming soon on the PRHI website.

The additional $100,000 in approved funding will be used to commission an economic analysis on the number of jobs that have the potential to be created or retained if the region deployed its world-renowned strength in autonomous technologies to prevent medical errors.

Read more in the Pittsburgh Business Times, Technical.ly, and thePittsburgh Jewish Chronicle.