Cuts in funding the National Institutes of Health the largest funder of science research has caused concern to those performing life-saving research. Accompanying these cuts is the less productive time spent by researchers doing private funding grants and less research.
Cost savings and regulatory changes seem to be at opposite ends of the spectrum as more efficient and secure ways of generating and securing medical records are needed. Unlike the healthcare providers ramping up to EMR requirements, the research end of the business is behind in this area.
According to Peter Muennig, MD, MPH, associate professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health “the literature on research efficiency and management is sparse, so hopefully our results will serve as a call for researchers to think more about ways in which they can reduce their budget footprint with the National Institutes of Health, facilitate reform of grant-making processes, and pave the way for a rethinking of institutional review board protocols such that the use of automated systems can be more readily accommodated (Dr. Muennig totally automated a research project, completing the project for under $300,000, that otherwise might have been budgeted at $1.2 million). There is a market failure in the research industrial complex, and government needs to step in to provide incentives to researchers to take risks and do things in new and innovative ways.”
With a market failure in the research end of healthcare, the government needs to incentive researchers to work more efficiently and motivate the brightest minds to keep looking for answers.
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