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

这个跨学科，跨机构的合作研究项目将经济分析与统计机器学习的最先进方法相结合，以评估美国国立卫生研究院（NIH）校外项目组合的研发支出的相对效率和有效性。计量经济学、主题建模和文档分类的新颖组合允许分析大量的资助摘要和科学出版物，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，并评估NIH资助的研究主题和科学进步之间的因果关系。两个具体的研究成果被认为是：科学出版物，按主题分类;和药物创新，进入临床开发的药物来治疗特定的疾病。 计划中的研究还包括完善现有的经济理论，以产生规范的公共研究支出的分配评估。更广泛的影响：这项研究将告知有关生物医学研究的联邦资金的关键政策问题。首先，财政紧缩需要仔细关注国家的研究组合和投资。该项目将描述和评价这些投资的生产力，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的基础研究资金刺激增加药物创新，NIH拥有一个重要的政策工具，以促进药物研发领域的高治疗重要性或显着的健康差距。

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.