The $787 billion stimulus package signed by President Obama on Tuesday dedicates $1.1 billion for head-to-head research to determine which drugs, devices, and procedures are most effective and carry the lowest risk.

The money will be split between the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

The legislation also creates a board, called the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Clinical Effectiveness Research, to oversee and direct the studies, which will likely include literature reviews as well as independent trials.

 

Exceptional, Unconventional Research Enabling Knowledge Acceleration (EUREKA) (R01)

The EUREKA program funds exceptionally innovative research that, if successful, will have an unusually high impact.

 

 

A statistical model is proposed for the analysis of peer-review ratings of R01 grant applications submitted to the National Institutes of Health. Innovations of this model include parameters that reflect differences in reviewer scoring patterns, a mechanism to account for the transfer of information from an application's preliminary ratings and group discussion to final ratings provided by all panel members and posterior estimates of the uncertainty associated with proposal ratings. Application of this model to recent R01 rating data suggests that statistical adjustments to panel rating data would lead to a 25% change in the pool of funded proposals. Viewed more broadly, the methodology proposed in this article provides a general framework for the analysis of data collected interactively from expert panels through the use of the Delphi method and related procedures.

The NIH recognizes the importance of keeping the American people informed about how their tax dollars are spent to support medical research. In 2009, the NIH will unveil the Research, Condition, and Disease Categorization (RCDC) system. RCDC will provide consistent and transparent information to the public about NIH research. With this new computer-based tool, the public will see NIH's research activities broken down into nearly 240 categories each fiscal year. The categories cover research areas, diseases, and conditions. The new system will produce a complete list of all NIH-funded projects related to each category.

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