 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
Appendix C:Advanced Technology Program Focused Program AreasFirst announced in 1994, ATP Focused Programs created a mechanism to provide critical-mass support for high-risk, enabling technologies in particular technology areas identified by U.S. industry as offering particularly important opportunities for economic growth. A "focused program" in the ATP identifies a specific set of goals to be reached within a specific time -- typically about five years. Often these require the parallel development of a suite of interlocking R&D projects. By managing groupsof projects that complement and reinforce each other, the ATP reaps the benefits of synergy and, in the long run, can have a stronger impact on U.S. technology and the economy. Focused programs are developed in response to specific suggestions received from industry and academia in the form of white papers outlining a specific technology area and describing:
Areas that attract particularly strong interest -- 30 or more white papers from different sources proposing the same general effort are not unusual -- are developed further through discussions with industry, meetings, workshops, and other interactions. Within a focused program, the ATP holds special competitions open only to project proposals that would advance the technology goals of the specific program. Specific projects are selected through the normal ATP competitive review process. To date, the ATP has received more than 1,000 white papers suggesting specific focused program areas and has established 11 that draw from 304 of the white papers. Detailed descriptions of those programs follow.
Component-Based Software
Paradoxically, the most visible portion of the software market -- the shrink-wrapped accounting spreadsheet programs for home and office, word-processing programs, entertainment software, and other offerings in computer stores -- represents only a relatively small fraction of the domestic installed base of software. The vast majority of business-critical software development activity is in major custom applications: complete systems for financial services, manufacturing, or chemical processing, for example. This custom software industry bears a strong resemblance to many industries of the early 19th century -- virtually all of the products are expensive, hand-crafted, error prone, one of a kind. Large industrial software systems tend to be monolithic. Individual pieces of the system cannot be reused easily (except possibly in the same company) because of the close cooperation required between the programmer and the systems integrator. Object-oriented technology and computer-aided software engineering tools have helped but have not provided the complete solutions to these problems. By most estimates, over half of all large application development projects in this industry end in failure -- after all the time and money is spent, the product still cannot be used operationally. The goal of the ATP Component-Based Software program is to develop the technologies needed to enable systematically reusable software components -- relatively small, carefully engineered software elements suitable for a broad array of applications. These technologies would enable software companies to build specialized components that can be sold to systems integrators and custom builders, who would combine them with other, largely purchased, off-the-shelf components to create high-quality custom applications. Software tools would automatically match components to applications systems, ensuring compatibility and reliability. Numerous sources of cost and error in application development would be eliminated. Major applications would no longer be large monolithic structures built from the ground up but rather assemblies of smaller components, competitively purchased from vendors who would have the specialized skills to concentrate on issues such as domain- and industry-specific knowledge, quality, and reliability for the components they provide. The technical goals of the Component-Based Software program include:
The structure of the software industry and the demand for business-critical software adapted to the needs of changing industries provide strong reasons for ATP support of the Component-Based Software program:
Barbara Cuthill, Program Manager
Information Infrastructure for Healthcare
The healthcare industry has a pivotal role in the economic health of the country, and information has a pivotal role in healthcare -- conservative estimates figure 20 percent of today's healthcare costs are related to the processing of information. Using effective information technology systems in the healthcare industry can deliver substantial cost savings while also strengthening an important sector of our industry. On the other hand, continuation of today's segmented applications of information systems to healthcare will only move the industry further from the possibility for a seamless information infrastructure. The ATP Information Infrastructure for Healthcare program will develop technologies at each of three consecutive levels:
Existing multimillion-dollar programs of research in healthcare information technology lack the coordination and integration necessary to share information nationwide. For example, individual hospitals are developing or installing their own information technology systems without knowing how to make sure that they will be connected seamlessly to the national healthcare enterprise. These institutions run the risk of investing huge resources in systems that will limit inherently the ability of others -- including suppliers, insurance companies, and non-affiliated physicians -- to make the best, most efficient use of the information contained in those systems. Furthermore, they miss out on the economies of scope that a more systematic approach to healthcare information systems would bring. The Information Infrastructure for Healthcare program builds on major industry consortia that in the past three years have begun to address the very complex interoperability issues related to a national information infrastructure for healthcare. These consortia include the Computerized Patient Record Institute, Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation's Healthcare Open System Trials program, and the National Healthcare Industry Consortium. Although member companies do research on individual technologies, ATP funding is needed to catalyze development of an infrastructure that will connect these islands of automation. Bettijoyce Lide, Program Manager
Digital Video in Information Networks
As computers become multimedia workstations, as television moves to high-definition digital formats, and as telephony takes on elements of both, information technologies are merging together in unprecedented ways. The industries that are creating information networks fully expect digital video to be an essential element of this convergence. And they anticipate huge annual markets for digital video -- in the range of hundreds of billions of dollars -- for phone, pay-per-view movies, home shopping, financial, educational, and other services that will include a video component. The overwhelming economic benefits from genuinely interoper-able digital video technology stem from expanded and more attractive capabilities and services on the user end of the information framework. The categories of entertainment, manufacturing, education and training, and health services alone account for several trillion dollars of commerce. Industries that distribute information and make, sell, and integrate network equipment account for another few hundred billion dollars of economic activity. Crucial technology decision points regarding convergence and digital video are arriving with disconcerting rapidity. One key issue is precisely how video-based information will be digitally packaged and distributed in an information network in which the producers of the video products, the distributors of the information, and its users all employ a diversity of processing, transmission, and receiving components. The ideal is that any video-based information product -- whether it be motion pictures, television programs, educational material, or healthcare information -- can travel via wire, optical fiber, satellite, or broadcast seamlessly into regular TVs, high-definition TVs, computer monitors, and other information appliances at homes, factories, hospitals, and schools. To develop truly interoperable digital video capability across future information networks means creating R&D structures under which distinctly different industries with different histories, technology bases, and approaches to standards development can work together toward the goal of interoperability between and among network components. Individual companies already have begun facing challenges such as finding means of greatly compressing the enormous amount of data that video information requires while maintaining image quality and remaining cost effective. Under the ATP focused program, many companies will be able to coordinate their efforts so that the collective outcome will be far more valuable for everyone on all sides of the information network. The ATP focused program will fill a critical R&D gap, establishing a long-term program involving both industry and government to facilitate development of an interoperable infrastructure, address intellectual property rights, support R&D in interoperable systems, and establish pilot programs to demonstrate and apply advanced video technology. Florina Hoffer, Program Manager
Technologies for the Integration of Manufacturing Applications
Companies in every manufacturing industry face the challenge of responding rapidly to changing markets and evolving business opportunities. Today, the speed with which new products are developed and delivered to market often is the chief determinant of competitive success. However, even highly automated plants and factories struggle to overcome difficulties in adapting or reconfiguring production operations to accommodate design changes and new product lines. Peculiarities in manufacturing software and incompatibilities among software applications, which necessitate customized systems-integration efforts, often are the primary sources of costly delays. The overall technical goal of the ATP focused program on Technologies for the Integration of Manufacturing Applications is to develop and demonstrate the technologies needed to create affordable, "integrable" manufacturing systems -- those that can be rapidly integrated and reconfigured and, in the long run, that can automatically adjust their performance in response to changing conditions and requirements. If successful, TIMA will enable greater speed and agility among U.S. companies in the discrete manufacturing sector. Technical work carried out under the program will facilitate industry-led efforts to create a real-time, "plug and play" manufacturing software environment. Discrete manufacturing includes some of the largest industries in the United States, such as electronics and transportation, and represented over 1 trillion in sales and accounted for well over one-third of all manufacturing jobs in 1991. Since this focused program also will affect discrete operations within the process industries, the government investment can be leveraged into savings totaling in the billions. The TIMA technologies potentially will benefit companies across a range of industries. A major roadblock for most firms is the costly, massive effort required to implement and integrate information systems that share real-time manufacturing data throughout organizations. Factory-floor information systems communicate neither directly nor regularly with front-office information systems dedicated to accounting, forecasting, and other resource planning activities, or with design and engineering systems. Middle-level information systems, known as Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), bridge this critical information gap between upstream and downstream activities. Today's MES solutions, however, are burdened by complexities that make them difficult to implement and integrate and, often, even more difficult to modify and upgrade. While these tasks are important to the management and operation of all manufacturing businesses, only a small fraction can afford the cost of installing and maintaining an integrated MES solution, estimated to run between $400,000 and $1 million. The sizable costs incurred for maintenance and systems integration work required to upgrade or otherwise change the system place MES further out of the reach of smaller manufacturers. The TIMA program aims for "integrable MES" that can be assembled from piece-like and reusable components to build comprehensive, system-wide surveillance and reporting. But unlike existing approaches, integrable MES will be more comprehensive, and it is expected to accommodate rapid customization, incremental installation, as-needed reconfiguration, and enhanced information flow throughout the enterprise. There are numerous technical barriers, some owing to the complex nature of real-time data, which must be overcome to achieve manufacturing execution system interoperability in a general and reusable manner. The technologies that the TIMA program supports are primarily infrastructural: they constitute an underlying foundation required to enable and support important applications of information technology to manufacturing. Individual companies also do not have the capabilities needed to develop the full collection of underpinning technologies. The MES industry is too fragmented for any one vendor's integration approach to dominate the marketplace, or for any one vendor to invest substantial resources in the uncertain prospect of establishing its technology as an industry standard. Playing the role of catalyst, ATP can help MES vendors and manufacturers to overcome this impasse, to focus their collective expertise, and to concentrate some of their resources on surmounting the barriers to developing integrable MES architectures and applications. The TIMA program expands and replaces an earlier ATP focused program on Computer-Integrated Manufacturing for Electronics, which was announced in April 1994. Based on the results of the first competition and extensive consultations with industry, ATP managers decided the original program was focused too narrowly to attract the desired generic, broadly enabling R&D projects. Barbara L.M. Goldstein, Program
Manager
Digital Data Storage
The nation's digital storage industry -- maker of the tapes, disks, and other gear that have become the archives and the retrieval tools of the information age -- achieved its world-leading status by doubling storage capacity about every three years. Now foreign competitors match that rate of progress, and new storage-hungry applications are multiplying rapidly. Industry observers say regaining lost market shares and pulling away from the global pack will require an annual improvement rate of about 60 percent -- more than twice as fast as today's already-supercharged pace. The ATP focused program on digital data storage aims to build the springboard for that kind of ambitious leap in technological capability and marketplace performance. The program concentrates on six key technical objectives:
Opportunities for improved data-storage technologies are multiplying in business and consumer markets. The visual communications market, which includes video-on-demand services and video server hardware, is growing at an annual rate of 40 percent. Companies adept at incorporating new technologies will have a strategic advantage in existing and emerging markets. For the domestic industry as a whole, that advantage would advance efforts to establish U.S. formats as international standards, which would be a boon to exports. In helping U.S. industry to move to the head of the curve of technology development and application, the ATP program also will better position U.S. companies to compete in consumer markets now dominated by soon-to-be-outdated analog storage products made by foreign manufacturers. In turn, a technologically advanced, globally competitive data storage industry will enhance the competitive prospects of computer manufacturers as well as the telecommunications, entertainment, and other important user industries. In establishing a comprehensive set of technical goals far beyond the capabilities of individual firms, the ATP focused program will help companies and research organizations to pool their talents, expertise, and resources. Through collaborations that minimize risks and costs, the industry can make large strides in innovation that lead to markedly superior technologies beyond the capabilities of competitors. Because of today's stiff competition in markets for digital data storage products, U.S. firms must concentrate almost exclusively on rapid, but incremental, improvements to existing products, which are quickly matched or outdone by other companies. Shared efforts, facilitated by the ATP, that concentrate on early-stage needs and obstacles can reduce overall R&D costs and accelerate the U.S. digital data storage industry's progress toward developing technologies critical to ensuring that it will be a top performer in a worldwide market projected to grow tenfold, to $1 trillion, during the next decade. Tom Leedy, Program Manager
Manufacturing Composite Structures
Composite materials -- plastics, for example, reinforced with glass, polymer, or carbon fibers -- have opened the possibility of a true materials revolution in industry. Advanced composites technology can produce materials that far outperform traditional materials such as steel while reducing weight, maintenance expenses, and operating costs of cars, bridges, offshore oil rigs, and other structures. But the development of advanced composites -- which typically combine the lightness of a polymer with the stiffness and strength of glass reinforcing fibers -- has been driven by the needs of the defense industry, stressing performance and traditionally ignoring cost. The five-year ATP program in Manufacturing Composite Structures was established to help U.S. companies develop the technical capability for producing vast amounts of affordable high-performance composites for large-scale commercial applications. The ability to produce commercial quantities of high-performance composites at competitive prices will open new annual markets in the range of tens of billions of dollars to U.S. companies, according to industry projections. Auto manufacturers alone estimate that composites orders for building lighter weight vehicles that consume less fuel could go as high as $20 billion. Methods of manufacturing composites now are too labor intensive or too product specific to work smoothly in larger volume commercial settings such as auto manufacturing and bridge building. The ATP program is working to correct that with an ambitious program to:
These and other advances also should lower the cost of designing with composites since fewer prototypes will have to be built and tested. The ATP focused program is the means to trigger expansion of advanced composites beyond military applications and small commercial niches, such as sports equipment, into much larger commercial markets. Most federal support (which accounts for more than half of all R&D in advanced polymer matrix composites) focuses on aerospace and military structures. That, together with the inherent risk of developing new materials in markets where traditional materials have been used for decades, has kept private investment in non-military applications to a trickle. The ATP effort is enabling U.S. industry to develop advanced composites, whose technological advantages have been demonstrated in military and aerospace applications, into a sound and expansive business for known commercial markets where the cost of these materials has kept them out of reach. By the end of the program, participants should be able to demonstrate cost-effective manufacturing processes for making large composite structures for several classes of applications and be in a position to develop and adapt those processes for commercial-scale production. Carol Schutte, Program Manager
Materials Processing for Heavy Manufacturing
Members of the heavy manufacturing "food chain" -- materials suppliers, materials processors, processing equipment manufacturers, component manufacturers, and original equipment manufacturers -- estimate that they could achieve up to 25 billion in additional market share in the next decade if they could more economically translate new laboratory developments in materials processing to the robust, cost-effective systems need for the production floor. These are the industries that compete for $1 trillion worth of global infrastructure work, which supports a $100 billion annual worldwide market in heavy off-road equipment that is expected to double early in the next century. They compete to supply equipment for large power plants, a $45 billion worldwide market each year, which is growing at a rate of 2 percent per year. The same set of industries competes for the annual $60 billion domestic market in vehicular engines, power trains, and chassis of vehicles, which also is growing at a 2 percent annual rate. The primary technical goal of the cost-shared, $145 million, five-year ATP program in Materials Processing for Heavy Manufacturing is to develop and demonstrate innovative materials-processing technologies that will help U.S. companies in the heavy manufacturing sector make longer lasting, more reliable, and more efficient products, features that will give their products a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Truck engines that need overhauls only after 1,600,000 km (1 million miles), drive trains that require only half as much maintenance and repair, and a 2 percent increase in power-generation efficiency are among the specific goals. One versatile tactic for achieving these and other ends is to develop surface treatments and coatings that make ceramic and metal components more resistant to wear, corrosion, fatigue, or temperature-mediated degradation. Another key technical goal is to significantly reduce manufacturing costs, a factor that will enable U.S. manufacturers to offer passenger cars, light trucks, and heavy equipment at prices that will make them especially attractive in the rapidly growing and highly competitive markets of developing countries. Some of the major strategies for lower manufacturing costs are the elimination of processing steps, the prevention of waste and pollution, and the reduction of manufacturing cycle time. One specific tactic to increase efficiency is to implement "intelligent processing" methods in which on-line monitoring and real-time process control enable manufacturers to tune their process continuously to maximize efficiency and quality. A way to reduce manufacturing time is through more intensive process modeling and rapid prototyping techniques, which also can make it possible to concurrently engineer several process steps rather than having to wait for the completion of earlier steps before focusing on later ones. Among tactics to prevent, control, and minimize waste and pollution are the conversion of steel waste into cement and concrete feedstock and the recovery of iron from the dust and slag of steel making. These projects typically fall under the high-risk category that companies cannot pursue amid more immediate challenges. In addition, this ATP focused program will forge new forms of vertical integration among companies, thereby creating versatile technology development and commercial infrastructures that will outlast the ATP program itself. Clare Allocca, Program Manager
Vapor Compression Refrigeration Technology
Manufacturing of air-conditioning and refrigeration equipment in the United States alone each year amounts to a $22 billion industry, which is about 40 percent of the world's production, and employs about 125,000 people. Conventional technology, however, is falling short on enough engineering, environmental, consumer, and technological fronts that refrigeration and air-conditioning engineers have entered an innovate-or-wither phase. According to industry projections, new demand for air-conditioning and refrigeration products by developing countries will fatten the global market by an estimated $150 billion over the next 10 years. With competition from Japanese makers, who now win 40 percent of the market, and from those in Europe, China, and Korea, the U.S. share of this emerging market will depend heavily on who innovates faster and better. The goal of the ATP focused program in advanced vapor compression refrigeration systems is to help U.S. manufacturers build the technical basis for developing lower cost and better performing products than all foreign competitors. Besides bolstering industrial competitiveness for these manufacturers, the program promises additional broad-based benefits. Increasing the average energy efficiency of air-conditioning and refrigeration equipment could simultaneously save industry users billions of dollars in energy costs and significantly reduce the emission of carbon dioxide and other pollutants as a result of reduced fuel consumption at power plants. Moreover, the focused program includes air-cleaning technologies, which include chemical systems that absorb or catalytically destroy many of the indoor air pollutants thought to be responsible for the "sick building syndrome." The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that as many as 50 percent of commercial buildings have problems with their indoor air and that improving air quality could yield annual savings of several billion dollars in the form of improved worker productivity, decreased public health costs, and reduced maintenance costs. The technical challenge centers on the vapor compression cycle, which is the principle of operation for the vast majority of cooling equipment now manufactured and in use both in individual residences and in industrial settings. During the cycle, liquid refrigerants -- among them the soon-to-be-phased-out chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), as well as their replacements -- expand in a metal coil. This is an energy-absorbing process that extracts heat from the space to be cooled. A mechanical compressor then consolidates the expanded gas and pushes it into a condenser where the vapor liquefies, which is an energy-releasing procedure that prepares the refrigerant for another run of the cooling cycle while releasing the heat associated with the condensation process away from the cooling system. The overall technical goals are to increase system efficiency by 25 percent, to reduce the noise levels and size of refrigeration components by the same amount, and to design and manufacture a system in which no refrigerant leaks. By providing a solid basis for industry collaboration on high-risk, cutting-edge technologies, the ATP can catalyze development that no individual company can undertake. ATP support will assist the industry in its own efforts to get a jump on the emerging worldwide markets that are rapidly developing. John Gudas, Program Manager
Motor Vehicle Manufacturing Technology
Changeovers to new car, van, or truck models are engineering and manufacturing marathons, taking U.S. auto makers and their suppliers an average of 42 to 48 months. More agile equipment and processes that sharply reduce the time and cost of converting factories to new models could reduce significantly the span from initial design to consumer-ready vehicle and give the U.S. auto-mobile industry an important competitive advantage. The ATP focused program on Motor Vehicle Manufacturing Technology fosters innovations in manufacturing practices that could slash time to market to 24 months, markedly better than even the best times logged to date by foreign or domestic car makers. These advances will lead to more versatile equipment, better control and integration of processes, and greater operational flexibility at all levels, from suppliers of parts, dies, and machine tools to assembly plants. With the reusable, modular equipment and processes envisioned by the program, the cost of retooling car-manufacturing facilities -- now ranging between $1.2 billion and $2.9 billion, depending on the extent of the changeover -- could be reduced by as much as tenfold. The savings would reduce the size of break-even production volumes needed to recover investment costs, making it profitable for U.S. automobile companies to compete in small-volume markets at mass-production prices. The automotive sector, which accounts for about 4 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product and employs more than 2 million people, will be the initial beneficiary of the anticipated technologies. Within the sector, parts and equipment suppliers, who are directly involved in ATP program efforts, will benefit most directly from the improved performance capabilities enabled by the technologies. Outside the sector, a variety of other manufacturing industries, from metal furniture to precision instruments, will be able to exploit targeted improvements in machining, grinding, and other widely used processes. The new focused program will concentrate on four major technical areas that underpin significant improvements in capabilities and performance:
Without the collaborative efforts that the ATP aims to marshal, U.S. auto makers and their suppliers would not mount and sustain the range of activities needed to achieve the major advances in technology, manufacturing practices, and industry performance that are the objectives of the new program. Jack Boudreaux, Program Manager
Catalysis and Biocatalysis Technologies
Catalysts transform vast reservoirs of chemical feedstocks into products like nylon and polyethylene polymers, themselves the industrial starting point for thousands of products ranging from milk jugs and mountain-climbing rope to toys and textiles. Catalysts, along with their biologically derived forms known as biocatalysts, sculpt chemical precursors into the precise molecular shapes that are the heart of many pharmaceuticals. Catalysts are becoming ever more central to the competitiveness of individual products, companies, industries, and countries. Those who develop new cost-effective catalysts and biocatalysts that improve the yields of products, cheapen or simplify processes, enable vendors to meet customers' needs more quickly and precisely, open up attractive products previously too costly for the marketplace, or reduce the amount of pollution produced during manufacturing processes will gain clear competitive advantages. In economic terms, catalysts add an estimated $2.4 trillion of value worldwide to raw chemical ingredients as scores of industries transform them into petroleum products, synthetic rubber and plastics, food products, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals, or as they control vehicle and industry emissions. In the United States, over 20 percent of all industrial products, an annual value of $500 billion, involve catalysis. The worldwide market for catalysts themselves, which come in forms as disparate as biological enzymes (specialized proteins) to fine metal powders to complex inorganic compounds called zeolites, amounted to about $7.8 billion in 1993 and is expected to rise to nearly $11 billion by 1998. The overall goal of the six-year, $160 million, cost-shared ATP program in catalysis and biocatalysis technology is to accelerate industry's own long-term attempts to develop the analytical tools, synthetic abilities, and theoretical insight to identify, design, and implement new catalytic tools and processes of major economic importance. Program technical goals focus on the general areas of catalysis process chemistries -- catalyst design and fabrication, and catalytic process design. Major tasks in catalysis process chemistry include:
Major tasks in catalytic process design include:
Leap-frog advances in catalysis of the sort targeted in this ATP focused program can come only from research of uncommon technical difficulty. At the bottom of every catalytic process are complex physical and chemical dramas playing out on tiny scales, often at blindingly fast speeds and under surveillance-unfriendly conditions common in industrial processes, factors that traditionally have made scientific study and design of catalysis technologies extremely challenging, costly, or technically impossible. Just as important, the program will forge novel liaisons for catalysis technology research that would not have formed without the collective participation of many companies throughout the program's planning and implementation. Improving catalysts and catalysis processes promises several important payoffs downstream in manufacturing. New catalysts that are more precisely designed than ones in present use can maximize desired products while minimizing byproducts, or can produce the same products using less expensive feedstocks. They can even replace feedstocks based on non-renewable and depletable resources, such as petroleum, with renewable ones, such as grains or switch grass. New catalysis processes also could eliminate manufacturing steps and lower capital retrofit, energy, or operating costs, as well as increase capacity and product yield. Another payoff, one that analysts predict will grow in relative importance in the coming years, will come from catalysis technologies that reduce pollution by obviating the need for organic solvents, eliminating troublesome byproducts that subsequently need to be recycled or disposed of, or converting pollution that is produced during manufacturing processes into valuable co-products or more benign forms. Pollution prevention and abatement catalysts like these will play increasingly large roles in reducing the costs of environmental compliance while making products more attractive to environmentally concerned clientele. Linda Beth Schilling, Program
Manager
Tools for DNA Diagnostics
Research on deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), accelerated by the Human Genome Project, is providing deep new insights into now poorly understood biological phenomena and diseases and to new treatments for genetically based ailments. The biotechnology industry expects that it will become both the impetus and basis of new multibillion dollar markets stemming from DNA-based diagnostic tests. According to industry projections for 1997, the DNA-based portion of the in-vitro (outside of the body) diagnostics industry is expected to reach into the vicinity of $500 million of a total estimated market of well over $18 billion, up from a $58 million portion of an estimated $5 billion market in 1992. By 2005, DNA probes are expected to account for $6 billion, or 15 percent, of a $40 billion in-vitro diagnostics market. At the moment, the United States enjoys a lead position in this ever more global industry. Reaping the full potential of DNA technology will require the development of new methods, instruments, and data-handling protocols. The ATP focused program on Tools for DNA Diagnostics seeks to speed up the process of DNA analyses and sequence interpretation by a factor of 10 and reduce costs from one-tenth to one-hundredth of the present price tag (which is in the range of $100 or more per test). Meeting these goals will help U.S. companies maintain their advantageous position in the coming years of the biotechnology revolution. The industries and technical areas that stand to benefit from the program include healthcare, forensics, biomedical research, environmental monitoring and bioremediation, toxicology, drug design, industrial bioprocessing, animal husbandry, agriculture, and quality control in the food industry. The initial goal of the Tools for DNA Diagnostics program is to develop cost-effective methods for sequencing, interpreting, and storing DNA sequences for diagnostic applications ranging from healthcare to agriculture to environmental monitoring. Moreover, these methods need to be highly automated, miniaturized whenever possible, easy to use, and inexpensive as well as able to determine and analyze DNA sequences accurately and rapidly. A working system meeting these criteria might begin with the injection of a sample into a cassette, which then would be positioned automatically into an instrument that performs the sequencing and stores the results. These results then could be displayed immediately on a computer screen and transferred to a patient's records. By the end of the five-year program, industry should have the technical tools and know-how in hand with which they can design, engineer, and produce commercial products like this one. The ATP program on DNA diagnostics can leverage existing government investments in DNA research to achieve the aim of low-cost DNA diagnostic technologies on a much larger scale. It can help U.S. industry to maintain its global leadership in the biotechnology industry. The Human Genome Project is a vital investment in the research that produces the maps and sequences. But it does not support technology development for diagnostics, which ultimately must be more user friendly and automated than state-of-the-art instruments for basic research in the laboratory setting. At the moment, companies that are well positioned to develop DNA diagnostic tools are often hesitant to push forward without additional government support because any of a number of competing analytical methodologies could turn out to be the most suitable for DNA diagnostics. Betting on one technology, which is all that most companies could hope to do, is too much of a gamble. The ATP Tools for DNA Diagnostics program both reduces and dilutes that risk. The payoff could be the technology base for a new multibillion dollar industrial base in the United States that will keep the country on top in gene biotechnology and widen its scope of industrial applications. Stanley Abramowitz, Program
Manager Return to main page. |
 |
ATP
website comments: webmaster-atp@nist.gov
/ Technical ATP inquiries: InfoCoord.ATP@nist.gov NIST is an agency of the U.S. Commerce Department Privacy policy / Security Notice / Accessibility Statement / Disclaimer / Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) / No Fear Act Policy / NIST Information Quality Standards / ExpectMore.gov (performance of federal programs) |
 |