A $25 million federal grant will bring a new artificial intelligence research center to Palo Alto, aimed at matching dementia patients with treatments tailored to their individual needs.

The National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of the National Institutes of Health, awarded the five-year grant to Stanford Medicine to create the Stanford University Artificial Intelligence and Technology Collaboratory for Precision Health and Interventions in Aging and AD/ADRD, or Stanford AITC. The center, based at 1070 Arastradero Road, is one of five nationwide funded under the same NIA program, Stanford Medicine announced on Sept. 14.

The Palo Alto VA Health Care System is a key partner.

Feng Vankee Lin, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford Medicine and chief nurse for research at the VA Palo Alto, is one of three principal investigators leading the center. The others are James Landay, a professor of engineering and co-director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), and Ehsan Adeli, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences whose Stanford profile describes his research as focused on AI analysis of brain imaging and human behavior.

The problem the center aims to solve is straightforward. Memory loss is the best-known symptom of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias, but other symptoms like agitation, sleep trouble and depression can have an even bigger impact on quality of life. Proven treatments exist, but matching the right one to the right patient is often slow trial and error.

"Doctors have clinical experience, but they don't have the data to guide selection of the right intervention for individual patients," Lin said in the announcement.

AI algorithms could be trained to analyze large amounts of patient data and recommend which medications or therapies might help a specific person, according to Stanford Medicine. Lin said she has encountered many dementia patients on multiple medications that may not improve quality of life, and that non-medicinal options like exercise take time and resources.

The center plans to fund 10 to 15 research projects per year over its five-year span. Possible outcomes include new wearable devices, cognitive-support software, digital biomarkers drawn from smartphones and ambient sensors, and robotic systems for music therapy or exercise assistance.

Four principles govern the work, according to the center's website: co-design with older adults rather than consulting them after the fact, evaluation before enthusiasm, equity as a design constraint, and open methods, code and data by default.

A Yale-led coordinating center serves as the national hub for the five-site AITC network. Other centers in the NIA program include sites at Johns Hopkins, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Massachusetts.

The Stanford AITC's research award program has not yet posted application deadlines or per-project funding amounts. The center's website says opportunities will be announced as they become available.