Collaborative Research: Balancing the Portfolio: Efficiency and Productivity of Federal Biomedical R&D Funding

这一跨学科、跨机构的合作研究项目将经济分析与统计机器学习的最新方法相结合，以评估美国国立卫生研究院(NIH)校外项目组合中研发支出的相对效率和效果。计量经济学、主题建模和文件分类的新组合允许分析大量拨款摘要和科学出版物的集合，识别NIH资助的研究中存在的潜在研究主题，评估研究主题之间可能的溢出效应，以及评估研究主题和科学进步的NIH资金变化之间的因果联系。两个具体的研究成果被考虑：按主题分类的科学出版物；以及药物创新，以进入临床开发治疗特定疾病的药物来衡量。计划中的研究还包括改进现有的经济理论，以产生公共研究支出分配的标准化评估。广泛影响：这项研究将为与联邦资助生物医学研究有关的关键政策问题提供信息。首先，财政紧缩需要仔细关注国家的研究组合和投资。该项目将描述和评估这些投资的生产力，作为重新平衡投资组合的政策建议的第一步，以最大限度地提高社会的预期投资回报。其次，如果NIH为基础研究提供的资金刺激了更多的药物创新，那么NIH拥有一个重要的政策工具，可以在治疗重要性较高或健康状况差异较大的领域促进药物研发。

This cross-disciplinary, cross-institution collaborative research project combines economic analysis with state-of-the-art methods from statistical machine learning, to assess the relative efficiency and efficacy of research and development expenditures across the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) portfolio of extramural projects. The novel combination of econometrics, topic modeling, and document classification permits analysis of massive collections of grant abstracts and scientific publications, identification of latent research topics present in NIH-funded research, assessment of possible spillover effects across research topics, and evaluation of causal linkages between changes in NIH funding by research topic and scientific advances. Two specific research outcomes are considered: scientific publications, classified by topic; and pharmaceutical innovation, measured by drugs entering into clinical development to treat specific diseases. Planned research also includes refinement of existing economic theory to produce normative evaluations of the allocation of public research spending.Broader Impacts: This research will inform key policy questions related to federal funding of biomedical research. First, fiscal austerity requires careful attention to the nation's research portfolio and investments. This project will describe and evaluate the productivity of those investments, as a first step towards policy recommendations for rebalancing the portfolio, to maximize society's expected return on investment. Second, if NIH funding for basic research spurs increased pharmaceutical innovation, NIH possesses an important policy tool to promote pharmaceutical R&D in areas of high therapeutic importance or significant health disparity.