How Research Sites Balance Funding Cuts and Efficiency Pressures

Lipset: Clearly, this is a very polarizing time politically for a lot of folks, but I think objectively, most would say that efficiencies are needed, and that would be a good thing. We want our public research dollars to make the greatest possible impact, but it does feel like many of the actions to date have been, the visual is more chainsaws than scalpels. We see things being targeted, like the role of overhead with NIH funding of academic research and that seems like an easy target just to go after, but it has tremendous consequences. Overhead in academic research supported by the NIH supports intramural research, those research initiatives that are being funded by the universities themselves, that often provide the seeding of what future research we want to go after, those are often the higher risk, smaller things to go after.

McAllister: Ultimately, they're doing more with less, like I said before, they're resource constrained, and they're doing more with less, which looks like a lot of things, but it's leveraging new technologies like telemedicine or other tools that could decrease the cost of the actual care being provided, so cost containment measures, using remote monitoring tools, using teams that didn't previously work together across multiple types of studies or departments. We've seen sites turning more towards industry sponsored trials to drive more revenue and ultimately cover some of the research they're doing that was NIH and other government funded research, essentially using pharma money to keep the lights on and keep things moving forward.