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）校外项目投资组合的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对大量资助摘要和科学出版物进行分析，识别NIH资助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NIH资助的研究主题变化与科学进步之间的因果关系。考虑两种具体的研究成果：科学出版物，按主题分类；还有制药创新，通过药物进入临床开发以治疗特定疾病来衡量。计划研究还包括完善现有的经济理论，以产生公共研究支出分配的规范评估。更广泛的影响：这项研究将告知与联邦资助生物医学研究相关的关键政策问题。首先，财政紧缩要求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对基础研究的资助刺激了药物创新的增加，那么NIH拥有一个重要的政策工具来促进具有高度治疗重要性或显著健康差异的领域的药物研发。

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.