SMART Health Seed Funding Supports Fall Prevention Project Leading to External Grant

A seed-funded pilot project from the FAU Center for SMART Health has successfully secured external grant funding to scale its impact. Led by Dr. Richard D. Shih, Professor of Emergency Medicine at FAU’s Schmidt College of Medicine, the project began with CSH support to explore the role of pharmacogenetics in preventing fall-related injuries among older adults. That foundational work laid the groundwork for a major external award from the Florida Medical Malpractice Joint Underwriting Association, which is now supporting a full-scale randomized controlled trial titled The Geriatric Emergency Department Pharmacologic Harm Prevention Project (The GREAT PHARM).

This transition from pilot to funded implementation exemplifies the SMART Health Center’s mission of catalyzing interdisciplinary collaborations and translational research. The success of the project is a direct result of a multidisciplinary team effort: in addition to Dr. Shih, the research includes co-investigators from FAU’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Drs. Borivoje Furht and Abhijit Pandya, who contributed AI and computing expertise to support clinical decision-making. Together, the team tackled one of the most complex and under-addressed challenges in geriatric medicine: how to integrate pharmacogenetic data into real-time medication prescribing to reduce adverse events.

Dr. Shih’s motivation for this work is both scientific and personal. After years of emergency medicine research and residency leadership, his focus shifted to fall prevention in older adults, particularly in the emergency setting. The inspiration, he says, came from his father, who passed away following a traumatic fall and head injury. That experience shaped his dedication to reducing the risks that older adults face, especially those related to medication side effects and drug-gene interactions.

The initial SMART Health seed grant enabled the team to pilot a workflow that applied artificial intelligence to streamline pharmacogenetic prescribing decisions. With AI support, the team hopes to help clinicians more efficiently interpret DNA-based information that would otherwise be difficult to apply in time-sensitive emergency settings. Findings from the pilot informed the design of The GREAT PHARM trial, which officially began in July 2025 and is currently enrolling patients. Participants are randomized to standard care or an intervention arm in which prescribing is guided by pharmacogenomic profiles. The study will track outcomes such as recurrent falls, drug-gene interaction rates, fall-related injuries and mortality, and patient acceptance of DNA-informed prescribing.

In parallel, the team is also exploring additional SMART Health–aligned technologies, including the use of large language models and AI-driven video gait analysis to assess fall risk in emergency department patients.

Student involvement has been a central part of the effort, with FAU undergraduate and medical students participating in patient recruitment and data collection, gaining firsthand experience at the intersection of clinical medicine, engineering, and genomics.

For Dr. Shih, the project’s success demonstrates not only the power of translational science, but also the untapped collaborative potential across FAU’s colleges and departments. “Some of the best progress we made came from simply reaching out,” he notes. “The seed funding didn’t just support the research—it built the bridge to a long-term collaboration.”