Project description:We quantify the impact of scientific grant funding at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on patenting by pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms. Our paper makes two contributions. First, we use newly constructed bibliometric data to develop a method for flexibly linking specific grant expenditures to private-sector innovations. Second, we take advantage of idiosyncratic rigidities in the rules governing NIH peer review to generate exogenous variation in funding across research areas. Our results show that NIH funding spurs the development of private-sector patents: a $10 million boost in NIH funding leads to a net increase of 2.3 patents. Though valuing patents is difficult, we report a range of estimates for the private value of these patents using different approaches.
Project description:Longitudinal micro-data derived from transaction level information about wage and vendor payments made by federal grants on multiple U.S. campuses are being developed in a partnership involving researchers, university administrators, representatives of federal agencies, and others. This paper describes the UMETRICS data initiative that has been implemented under the auspices of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation. The resulting data set reflects an emerging conceptual framework for analyzing the process, products, and impact of research. It grows from and engages the work of a diverse and vibrant community. This paper situates the UMETRICS effort in the context of research evaluation and ongoing data infrastructure efforts in order to highlight its novel and valuable features. Refocusing data construction in this field around individuals, networks, and teams offers dramatic possibilities for data linkage, the evaluation of research investments, and the development of rigorous conceptual and empirical models. Two preliminary analyses of the scientific workforce and network approaches to characterizing scientific teams ground a discussion of future directions and a call for increased community engagement.
Project description:The success of any biobank depends on a number of factors including public's view of research and the extent to which it is willing to participate in research. As a prototype of surrounding countries, public interest in research and biobanking in addition to the influence and type of informed consent for biobanking were investigated in Jordan. Data were collected as part of a national survey of 3196 individuals representing the Jordanian population. The majority of respondents (88.6%) had a positive perception of the level of research in Jordan and they overwhelmingly (98.2%) agreed to the concept of investing as a country in research. When respondents were asked if the presence of an informed consent would influence their decision to participate in biobanking, more individuals (19.8%) considered having an informed consent mechanism as a positive factor than those who considered it to have negative connotations (13.1%). However, a substantial portion (65%) did not feel it affected their decision. The majority of survey participants (64%) expressed willingness to participate in biobanking and over 90% of them preferred an opt-in consent form whether general (75.2%) or specific for disease or treatment (16.9%). These results indicate a promising ground for research and biobanking in Jordan. Educational programs or mass awareness campaigns to promote participation in biobanking and increase awareness about informed consent and individual rights in research will benefit both the scientific community as well as the public.
Project description:In many Western societies there are rising concerns about increasing polarization in public debate. However, statistics on private attitudes paint a different picture: the average attitudes in societies are more moderate and remain rather stable over time. The present paper presents an agent-based model of how such discrepancies between public opinion and private attitudes develop at the scale of micro-societies. Based on social psychological theorizing, the model distinguishes between two types of agents: a) those seeking to gain or maintain a good reputation and status, and b) those seeking to promote group harmony by reaching consensus. We characterized these different types of agents by different decision rules for either voicing their opinion or remaining silent, based on the behavior of their proximal network. Results of the model simulations show that even when the private attitudes of the agents are held constant, publicly expressed opinions can oscillate and (depending on the reputational concerns of individual actors) situations can occur in which minorities as well as majorities are silenced. We conclude that the macro-level consequences of micro-level decisions to either voice an opinion or remain silent provide a foundation for better understanding how public opinions are shaped. Moreover, we discuss the conditions under which public opinion could be considered a good representation of private attitudes in a society.
Project description:IntroductionIn 2012, bedaquiline became the first new treatment from a novel class to be approved for tuberculosis in nearly five decades and is now a core component of the standard of care for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. In addition to the originator pharmaceutical company, Janssen, a range of governmental and non-profit entities have contributed to the development of bedaquiline.Materials and methodsWe identified various avenues of public investments in the development of bedaquiline: direct funding of clinical trials and a donation programme, tax credits and deductions, and revenues resulting from the priority review voucher (PRV) awarded to the originator. Data on investments were gathered through contact with study leads and/or funders; for non-responses, published average costs were substituted. The originator company's expenses were estimated by similar methods. Tax credits and deductions were calculated based on estimated originator trial costs and donation expenses. The value of the PRV was estimated by application of a published model.ResultsPublic contributions through clinical trials funding were estimated at US$109-252 million, tax credits at US$22-36 million, tax deductions at US$8-27 million, administration of a donation programme at US$5 million, PRV revenues at US$300-400 million. Total public investments were US$455-747 million and originator investments were US$90-240 million (if capitalized and risk-adjusted, US$647-1,201 million and US$292-772 million, respectively).ConclusionsEstimating the investments in the development of a medicine can inform discussions regarding fair pricing and future drug development. We estimated that total public investments exceeded the originator's by a factor of 1.6-5.1.
Project description:The present article articulates principles for effective public-private partnerships (PPPs) in scientific research. Recognizing that PPPs represent one approach for creating research collaborations and that there are other methods outside the scope of this article, PPPs can be useful in leveraging diverse expertise among government, academic, and industry researchers to address public health needs and questions concerned with nutrition, health, food science, and food and ingredient safety. A three-step process was used to identify the principles proposed herein: step 1) review of existing PPP guidelines, both in the peer-reviewed literature and at 16 disparate non-industry organizations; step 2) analysis of relevant successful or promising PPPs; and step 3) formal background interviews of 27 experienced, senior-level individuals from academia, government, industry, foundations, and non-governmental organizations. This process resulted in the articulation of 12 potential principles for establishing and managing successful research PPPs. The review of existing guidelines showed that guidelines for research partnerships currently reside largely within institutions rather than in the peer-reviewed literature. This article aims to introduce these principles into the literature to serve as a framework for dialogue and for future PPPs.
Project description:BackgroundDespite a growing need for primary care physicians in the United States, the proportion of medical school graduates pursuing primary care careers has declined over the past decade.ObjectiveTo assess the association of medical school research funding with graduates matching in family medicine residencies and practicing primary care.DesignObservational study of United States medical schools.ParticipantsOne hundred twenty-one allopathic medical schools.Main measuresThe primary outcomes included the proportion of each school's graduates from 1999 to 2001 who were primary care physicians in 2008, and the proportion of each school's graduates who entered family medicine residencies during 2007 through 2009. The 25 medical schools with the highest levels of research funding from the National Institutes of Health in 2010 were designated as "research-intensive."Key resultsAmong research-intensive medical schools, the 16 private medical schools produced significantly fewer practicing primary care physicians (median 24.1% vs. 33.4%, p < 0.001) and fewer recent graduates matching in family medicine residencies (median 2.4% vs. 6.2%, p < 0.001) than the other 30 private schools. In contrast, the nine research-intensive public medical schools produced comparable proportions of graduates pursuing primary care careers (median 36.1% vs. 36.3%, p = 0.87) and matching in family medicine residencies (median 7.4% vs. 10.0%, p = 0.37) relative to the other 66 public medical schools.ConclusionsTo meet the health care needs of the US population, research-intensive private medical schools should play a more active role in promoting primary care careers for their students and graduates.
Project description:BackgroundSmall private-sector health care providers can play an important role in meeting the developing country health care needs, but a lack of credit can prove major constraint to small-provider expansion. This study examines the potential of small, microfinance loans to strengthen the private health sector and improve access to quality preventive and curative health services in Uganda.MethodsThis study estimates logistic regressions using 2,387 client exit interviews to assess the impact of microfinance loans on perceived quality and the viability and sustainability of small, private clinics.ResultsThe study finds perceived quality improved with loan recipients' clients being more likely to choose clinics on the basis of drug availability, fair charges, cleanliness, and confidentiality. In addition, the assessment found evidence of increased client flows, but the changes produced mixed results for sustainability with respondents being only half as likely to "always" visit a particular clinic.ConclusionThe results indicate that the microfinance program improved perceived quality at loan recipient clinics, especially as reliable drug outlets.
Project description:The Broadening Experiences in Scientific Experiences (BEST) program at Wayne State University was designed to increase doctoral students' awareness of multiple employment sectors beyond academia, improve their knowledge of transferable skills required to succeed in any career path, provide opportunities to explore diverse career paths, and gain in-depth knowledge about those paths using experiential learning opportunities. We devised a three-phase program that ranged from providing students with a broad introduction to multiple career opportunities to immersive experiential learning in a specific career sector. Importantly, program content was developed and delivered by alumni and industry experts in five employment sectors-business/industry, communication, government, law/regulatory affairs, and undergraduate/PUI teaching-in partnership with WSU faculty. This article provides data on two notable outcomes: doctoral students participate equally in BEST activities regardless of gender, race, and citizenship status, and student participation in BEST activities did not correlate with lower GRE ratings, lower GPA, or increased time-to-degree. Further, a "halo" effect of the program is evidenced by participation of students from all disciplines, not just the biomedical sciences. Centralizing BEST activities within the Graduate School will allow faculty and individual programs to save resources and time.
Project description:BackgroundPrivacy protecting is an important issue in medical informatics and differential privacy is a state-of-the-art framework for data privacy research. Differential privacy offers provable privacy against attackers who have auxiliary information, and can be applied to data mining models (for example, logistic regression). However, differentially private methods sometimes introduce too much noise and make outputs less useful. Given available public data in medical research (e.g. from patients who sign open-consent agreements), we can design algorithms that use both public and private data sets to decrease the amount of noise that is introduced.MethodologyIn this paper, we modify the update step in Newton-Raphson method to propose a differentially private distributed logistic regression model based on both public and private data.Experiments and resultsWe try our algorithm on three different data sets, and show its advantage over: (1) a logistic regression model based solely on public data, and (2) a differentially private distributed logistic regression model based on private data under various scenarios.ConclusionLogistic regression models built with our new algorithm based on both private and public datasets demonstrate better utility than models that trained on private or public datasets alone without sacrificing the rigorous privacy guarantee.