Abstract
BackgroundTo allow research organisations to co-ordinate activity to the benefit of national and international funding strategies requires assessment of the funding landscape; this, in turn, relies on a consistent approach for comparing expenditure on research. Here, we discuss the impact and benefits of the United Kingdom’s Health Research Classification System (HRCS) in national landscaping analysis of health research and the pros and cons of performing large-scale funding analyses.MethodsThe first United Kingdom health research analysis (2004/2005) brought together the 11 largest public and charity funders of health research to develop the HRCS and use this categorisation to examine United Kingdom health research. The analysis was revisited in 2009/2010 and again in 2014. The most recent quinquennial analysis in 2014 compiled data from 64 United Kingdom research organisations, accounting for 91% of all public/charitable health research funding in the United Kingdom. The three analyses summarise the United Kingdom’s health research expenditure in 2004/2005, 2009/2010 and 2014, and can be used to identify changes in research activity and disease focus over this 10 year period.ResultsThe 2004/2005 analysis provided a baseline for future reporting and evidence for a United Kingdom Government review that recommended the co-ordination of United Kingdom health research should be strengthened to accelerate the translation of basic research into clinical and economic benefits. Through the second and third analyses, we observed strategic prioritisation of certain health research activities and disease areas, with a strong trend toward increased funding for more translational research, and increases in specific areas such as research on prevention.ConclusionsThe use of HRCS in the United Kingdom to analyse the research landscape has provided benefit both to individual participatory funders and in coordinating initiatives at a national level. A modest amount of data for each project is sufficient for a nationwide assessment of health research funding, but achieving coverage of the United Kingdom portfolio relies on sourcing these details from a large number of individual funding agencies. The effort needed to compile this data could be minimised if funders routinely shared or published this information in a standard and accessible way. The United Kingdom approach to landscaping analyses could be readily adapted to suit other groups or nations, and global availability of research funding data would support better national and international coordination of health research.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12961-016-0116-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
To allow research organisations to co-ordinate activity to the benefit of national and international funding strategies requires assessment of the funding landscape; this, in turn, relies on a consistent approach for comparing expenditure on research
Data collection, coding and analysis The elements of each individual United Kingdom Health Research Analysis are explained in more detail within the published reports [13]
The 2004/2005 analysis contributed to a landmark United Kingdom Government review of health research spending conducted by Sir David Cooksey in 2006 [16]
Summary
To allow research organisations to co-ordinate activity to the benefit of national and international funding strategies requires assessment of the funding landscape; this, in turn, relies on a consistent approach for comparing expenditure on research. We discuss the impact and benefits of the United Kingdom’s Health Research Classification System (HRCS) in national landscaping analysis of health research and the pros and cons of performing large-scale funding analyses. In the United Kingdom, the Department of Health (England) has estimated costs of more than £5 billion per year to the National Health Service (NHS) [1] and £27 billion to the economy [2] due to obesity, with almost 1 in 4 adults and around 15% of children being obese [3]. In. 2014, the United Kingdom Alzheimer’s Society published a major study on the social and economic impact of dementia in the United Kingdom, which estimated that there will be 850,000 people living with dementia in the United Kingdom by 2015 and that dementia already costs the country £26 billion a year [4]. Investment in health research is widely regarded as generating positive economic returns [7], but estimations of these returns are often highly caveated and, the means to measure such returns require further development [8]
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