Unless Congress and the White House take action by the end of the year, across-the-board spending reductions will go into effect for all federal agencies as a result of provisions in the Budget Control Act of 2011. The budget sequestration would reduce defense discretionary funding by 9.4 percent and non-defense funding by 8.2 percent from the 2011 baseline.
With a $1 billion investment over the next three years, Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) will be a standalone agency within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and is designed to produce quicker research outcomes.
A pilot collaboration between the National Science Foundation (NSF) Innovation Corps (I-Corps™) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will offer a nine-week boot camp to help biomedical researchers bring their discoveries to market. Academic researchers and entrepreneurs who have received SBIR/STTR Phase One awards from participating NIH institutes may apply to the I-Corps at NIH™ for training in building scalable business models around their technologies.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is accepting applications for the Research Evaluation and Commercialization Hub (REACH) program to support proof-of-concept centers (Hubs) that facilitate and accelerate the translation of biomedical innovations into commercial products that improve patient care and enhance health. NIH intends to award approximately $9 million to institutions of higher education to establish three new REACH Hubs.
The administration’s FY15 budget request for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is $77.1 billion in discretionary spending, reflecting a 1.6 percent decrease from FY14 enacted funding levels. Discretionary spending accounts for only 7.5 percent of the total proposed HHS budget. Mandatory spending for programs like Medicare, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program account for the balance. Total FY14 budget authority for HHS would be $1 trillion (6 percent increase over FY14 enacted).
The Congressional Research Service recently published findings on the current conditions of federal support of academic research, highlighting the threat that constrained university, state and federal budgets places on critical basic research. Although there is growing recognition that R&D is crucial to the long term health of the nation's science and technology sectors, data from the report shows U.S. colleges and universities have seen a decline in financial support at the federal, state and private levels.
To reflect an evolving mission that expands the scope of genomics research, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced a major reorganization that will establish four new divisions to constitute the National Genome Research Institute's Extramural Research Program. The multi-divisional structure will help the institute pursue its enhanced mission for using genomics to advance medical science and improve human health, which has become a greater focus from its original mission to unravel the Human Genome, according to NIH.