Each year the HRC’s Research Policy, Strategy and Evaluation team completes a review of the HRC’s annual funding round using a range of selected criteria. Here we highlight some of the findings from the team’s 2014 funding round review.
- Last year the HRC invested $76 million through its annual funding round, supporting four Programmes and 50 Projects. Although the number of randomised clinical trials was similar to recent years, there was a notable increase in contracts classified as clinical research compared with previous years.
- Biomedical research remained the largest funded category.
- The three main health issues supported were oncology and cancer, obstetric complications, and cardiovascular/cerebrovascular disease.
- For the first time, the HRC trialed a new analysis tool used by many UK health research funders to measure investment across eight research activity types, from basic to applied research. The results show that the causes of diseases or conditions, known as aetiology (28.7%), and detection and diagnosis (18.3%) were the two largest investment categories in 2014. The two smallest categories were prevention (7.7%) and health services (3.6%).
- 67% of the HRC’s funding round budget supported research that is expected to contribute to the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the health system in the short to medium term. This included 19.7% of funding allocated to research that will provide evidence or tools to improve clinical decision making, and 13.9% for research involving low-cost or no-cost improvements to treatment.
- 20.0% of research supported has potential to generate value through intellectual property and innovation, including through commercialisation of new drugs, devices, and therapies.
- 61% of contracts named at least one international collaborator on their research application, with 28 different countries represented. The top five countries represented were Australia (15), US (13), UK (10), Netherlands (4), and Switzerland (4).