RICHMOND, Virginia, May 20, 2015 – algorithmRx, headquartered in Richmond, Virginia, announced today that it has received confirmation of funding for the second year of a research grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as part of the NIH’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.
The original two-year grant totaled nearly $1.5 million, with $910,888 approved for the first year beginning May 1, 2014. Funding for the second year was dependent on ongoing development success during year one as well as NIH funding availability in year two. Effective May 1, 2015, algorithmRx has been funded for the full amount of the year two request, bringing the total approved two-year funding to the originally requested amount.
The purpose of the original grant request was to fund ongoing research related to algorithmRx’s predictive healthcare algorithm, aRx Statin Advisor®, which will be one in a suite of novel healthcare algorithms designed to improve the medication management of common chronic health conditions. aRx Statin Advisor is an evidence-based clinical decision-support tool that assists clinicians in selecting the most effective statin and dose regimen for patients with high LDL-cholesterol (“LDL-C” or “bad cholesterol”).
In the original grant application, the Company identified five Aims or tasks to be completed, and according to Lenn Murrelle, PhD, Managing Partner of algorithmRx, excellent progress has been made to date on these five Aims. Dr. Murrelle said, “The first Aim was to conduct an external validation study to complement our Phase I study which was based on 77 million patient records from the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). We are now nearing completion of the Phase II study, which leverages approximately 38 million patient records from the Quintiles GE Centricity database. These records are considerably more heterogeneous than those of the VHA.”
Dr. Murrelle added, “The second Aim of the grant is to develop a more robust aRx Statin Advisor model based on the enhanced algorithm that will be the primary product of our Aim one. We expect to have Aim two completed later this summer. The third Aim is a Clinical Utility Demonstration Project to test the robustness and user-experience aspects of aRx Statin Advisor, and this is currently underway at a multi-site primary care practice in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We are about to begin the fourth Aim, which is a Health Economics and Outcomes Research (HEOR) study to confirm the substantial economic benefits expected from aRx Statin Advisor. The fifth Aim of the grant focuses on the possible integration into the aRx Statin Advisor algorithm of genetic variables related to the efficacy and safety of statins, and this Aim has been completed.”
The Company will complete research related to the SBIR grant in early 2016 with commercial roll-out of aRx Statin Advisor shortly thereafter.

Based in Richmond, Virginia, algorithmRx, LLC develops and delivers innovative healthcare algorithms at the point of care. Our computer-based clinical decision-support systems (CDSS) provide busy clinicians with adaptive, evidence-based guidance to enhance medication management of common chronic health conditions.

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health under SBIR Phase I (1 R43 HL117553-01) and SBIR Phase II (2 R44 HL117553-02 and 5 R44 HL117553-03) awards.

 

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