Telehealth Grant
TELEHEALTH GRANT 2025 – THE CERMES FOUNDATION
Background: The CERMES Foundation is committed to advancing medical research in Ghana and across the continent. As such, it has a goal to fund medical research projects that significantly impact healthcare. The foundation’s interest lies in medical research that focuses on telehealth.
Aim: The CERMES Foundation seeks to award grants to young researchers (both undergraduate and postgraduate) between 1st – 3rd year and final years who are a year from graduation. The Foundation is looking at awarding relevant sums to qualified applicants with innovative proposals that will impact healthcare delivery. These grants can be used for thesis or dissertations.
We define telemedicine/telehealth as: the delivery of health care services where distance is a critical factor, by all health care professionals using information and communication technologies for the exchange of valid information for diagnosis, treatments and prevention of diseases and injuries, research and evaluation and for continuing education of healthcare providers, all in the interests of advancing the health of individuals and their communities.
Be a young researcher across the country (undergraduate or postgraduate) 1st – 3rd year and final years who are a year from graduation (public health, nurses, etc)
Have your work focused on telehealth
Must be able to commit to the full cycle of the research period
Must be in a reputable school
Must be resident in Ghana
Remote Patient Monitoring & Chronic Disease Management
Telehealth Access for Rural & Underserved Communities
Open Source vs. Proprietary Balance
Hardware Resource Efficiency
Interoperability
Scalability
Flexibility and Reusability
Ease of Use
Appropriateness
Research work that focus on using telehealth to monitor patients with chronic conditions (e.g., diabetes, hypertension) remotely, helping them manage their health effectively from home. This could include wearable health devices, mobile applications, and AI-based monitoring systems that alert healthcare providers of potential issues before they escalate.
Research work aimed at improving healthcare access in rural and underserved communities by setting up telehealth networks and digital clinics. This focus area encourages innovative solutions to bridge healthcare gaps, such as low-cost telemedicine platforms, offline-capable solutions, and partnerships with local healthcare workers to provide virtual consultations.
The solution balances between cost and support/documentation. Should be free but well supported, or proprietary but better supported and maintained.
Should minimize power consumption and hardware requirements, especially for rural or mobile deployments where resources are limited.
Should enable seamless integration and information exchange across modules and healthcare centers, enhancing system functionality.
Systems should easily expand to accommodate more users, cases, diseases, and healthcare centers as the project grows.
Should be able to adapt to broader applications (e.g., more diseases, treatments) and be reusable for other projects to save time and costs.
Should be able to combine functionality and simplicity, ensuring developers can use them efficiently without extensive training
Should align with project goals, prioritizing reliability and robustness for everyday use while balancing innovation.
These projects should reimagine making healthcare affordable and accessible.
Applicants must submit a one-page letter of intent of their proposed project.
Applicants’ bio (Maximum 2 pages) – contact information, present positions, training (relevant research training), publications if any and other relevant information
Applicant must submit recommendation letters or letters of support from 2 mentors (1 primary, 1 co-mentor) in their institution to guide the project
The mentors profile should be included (mentors present position, trainings, training specifically in research area with 1 – inch margin on all sides and a minimum font size of 12).
The letter from the mentor must be on an institutional letterhead and should outline the following:
The experience of the mentor with the applicant
Their qualifications in the research area of the applicant
Previous experience with similar applicants
Plans to mentor the applicant in the research area
Commitment to ensure the applicant has a productive environment to pursue their project
Applicants must submit an introductory letter from their respective schools.
The letter must be a maximum of 1 page
The letter must be on the official institution’s letterhead with 1-inch margins on all sides and font size 12.
The letter should describe the institution’s commitment to applicant to see them through the execution of the research by providing a good environment and resources for the research to gain experience/ career development.
Applicants must be willing to attend and present their work either virtually, or in-person as required by the board of CERMES.
Applicants work must demonstrate the value CERMES will derive from providing the allocated funds.
Successful grantees will be required to engage in substantive reporting throughout the cycle of the funding.
After 12 months, recipients will also have to report to the board of the foundation on the state of their research project indicating the necessary milestones, the challenges, how they overcome these challenges and the use of funds.
At the end of the research, recipients will submit a final report of the results of the research as well as provide an overall account for the funds used, publications of the research, articles, and any conference talks that they undertook based on the research.
Research should have ethical clearance from a reputable Institutional Review Board (IRB)/ Research Ethics Committees (RC) to fulfill the principles for ethical research.
The letter of intent (LOI) should demonstrate briefly the identified gap, approach, and how their work will make an impact in telehealth.
The LOI should include the names of the mentors.
A committee of expert health practitioners will review each one-page letter of intent (LOI).
LOI’s with originality, feasibility and relevance to telehealth will receive priority attention, and complete proposals requested from successful applicants moving on to the next stage.
In the next stage, the letters of support from the mentors will be key in determining the applicant’s selection and score on the next stage when applicants have been contacted to submit complete proposals.
In the event of changes in a letter of intent that has already been submitted and selected to move on to the next stage, the applicant should give (2) weeks’ notice to CERMES for the appropriate action to be taken.
Successful applicants will be notified to submit a proposal after selection. There will be a 3-week duration from applicants been notified after LOI to submit complete proposals to deadline of submission on the portal.
Applications Open for LOI’s: 31st January, 2025.
Deadline for submission of LOI: 28th February, 2025 23:59pm GMT
Announcement of successful LOI’s: 31st March, 2025 23:59pm GMT
Deadline for submission of proposals: 30th April, 2025 23:59pm GMT
Announcement of Awardees – 30th May, 2025
NB: Applications with all relevant documents should be emailed to [email protected]
NB: Applications submitted after stipulated times will not be considered.
