Abstract
Although most research universities offer investigators help in obtaining patents for inventions, investigators generally have few resources for scaling up non-patentable innovations, such as health behavior change interventions. In 2017, the dissemination and implementation (D & I) team at the University of Wisconsin's Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) created the Evidence-to-Implementation (E2I) award to encourage the scale-up of proven, non-patentable health interventions. The award was intended to give investigators financial support and business expertise to prepare evidence-based interventions for scale-up. The D & I team adapted a set of criteria named Critical Factors Assessment, which has proven effective in predicting the success of entrepreneurial ventures outside the health care environment, to use as review criteria for the program. In March 2018 and February 2020, multidisciplinary panels assessed proposals using a review process loosely based on the one used by the NIH for grant proposals, replacing the traditional NIH scoring criteria with the eight predictive factors included in Critical Factors Assessment. two applications in 2018 and three applications in 2020 earned awards. Funding has ended for the first two awardees, and both innovations have advanced successfully. Late-stage translation, though often overlooked by the academic community, is essential to maximizing the overall impact of the science generated by CTSAs. The Evidence-to-implementation award provides a working model for supporting late-stage translation within a CTSA environment.
Highlights
The University of Wisconsin – Madison (UW) is one of the nation’s 61 NIH-funded Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) grantees
The purpose of this article is to describe the elements, processes, and tools used in the E2I award program that are intended to support late-stage translation within a CTSA environment, to share early results on the feasibility and acceptability of the program gathered from participant feedback to guide decisions for adoption at other CTSA sites, and to outline plans for future evaluation of the model
Applications with the highest scores are recommended to Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR)’s leadership and the E2I funder, the Wisconsin Partnership Program, which make the final funding decision
Summary
The University of Wisconsin – Madison (UW) is one of the nation’s 61 NIH-funded Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) grantees. The goal of ICTR is to create an environment at UW that facilitates the conduct of research that improves human health. Some research conducted at UW results in patentable products, such as drugs and devices, and the UW – like almost all research universities – has robust technology transfer infrastructure in place to help researchers apply for patents on their inventions and create new businesses (e.g., the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and Discovery to Product). UW – again like most research universities – has less infrastructure to support scaling up non-patentable interventions (e.g., novel health care models, behavioral or other health interventions, smartphone applications, etc.) that have been shown to improve public health, representing a potential evidence-to-practice gap to be closed. Most investigators have limited access to purveyors or intermediary organizations that might help commercialize the interventions they’ve
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