faculty focus
Treatments for red tape
Researchers and other stakeholders say it’ s time to make the grant process easier. By Dallas Bastian
The majority of funding applications for medical projects get rejected. The researchers behind products such as Gardasil, the HPV vaccine, are amongst the lucky ones.
Up to 80 per cent of grant applications submitted to the National Health and Medical Research Centre( NHMRC) are unsuccessful.
“ The initial work that laid the foundation for commercial development of Gardasil was supported by grants from NHMRC and the Queensland Cancer Council,” Griffith University professor Nigel McMillan, who has previously worked with Gardasil creator Ian Frazer, says.
McMillan says the grants process is very involved and medical research is highly regulated.“ I think many of these required approvals could be gained once awarded, not at application, as the work will not occur if funding is not available,” he says. Prime Minister Tony Abbott recently called for less regulation surrounding grant applications. In a ministerial statement he asked,“ Why should Australian medical researchers collectively put 500 years of work into preparing grant applications – of which only 20 per cent succeed?”
McMillan agrees there is cause to tweak the system.“ I think we need to adopt a more rapid process along the lines of the NIH, with things like multiple rounds and an expansion of calls for applications in particular areas for more targeted research,” he explains.
The Association of Australian Medical Research Institutes( AAMRI) says it’ s time for significant reforms, due to the current climate surrounding grants.
“ The grants system is fundamentally a good system and is run by a very competent agency,” professor Brendan Crabb, president of AAMRI explains. However, he adds,“ What’ s happened in recent times is that it [ every year it has become ] more and more competitive because the amount of money in the system has stayed about the same but the cost of every grant has gone up.”
He says this means it’ s getting harder to win a grant, resulting in individuals putting in more.“ It spirals out of control,” he says.“ Where the criticism comes from is that there are a lot of people feeling a bit uncertain about a career in medical research.”
The system could be simplified, Crabb says, adding the NHMRC is already aware of this and is working hard to make it easier to write an application.
A more radical change that AAMRI favours is extending the amount of time a grant lasts, something McMillan agrees with. The association supports, in principal, a move from the typical three years to five. The government is also in support of this. Abbott says,“ Soon, NHMRC grants will run for five years – not three – so that successful medical researchers will spend less time filling out forms.”
But it’ s not a simple fix. As Crabb says,“ The unfortunate thing about making grants longer is that you can’ t just do that in a blanket way with the current rules. There are unintended consequences of doing that. For example, you can’ t commit five years of money in a budget cycle that is less than five years, otherwise you use up all your money in a forward commitment.”
He says there has to be a method to account for that; for example, using a three-plus-two approach, in which the government promises three years with an additional two after a checkpoint and simple renewal process. Crabb cautions that there a multiple things to be considered seriously before implementing this example, to ensure that it doesn’ t create more problems than it fixes.
Professor Warwick Anderson, CEO of the NHMRC, says since the funds come from tax payers, the research centre’ s job is to do everything it can to select the most valuable research to fund. And, unfortunately, one program implemented to make the application process easier – the electronic Research Grants Management System – was less than satisfactory and put additional burden on people.
This year, NHMRC has devoted resources to making things much better in this area.“ We’ ve taken out about 50 per cent of the work that applicants need to do to put [ data ] into the various fields to apply for our grants,” Anderson says.“ We’ ve had quite good feedback for that.”
The NHMRC is also working to reduce its reporting requirements. Though Anderson says most medical researchers also apply to a range of charitable funding bodies and as much as NHMRC can do to reduce the burden it will not solve all of the problems.“ It’ s estimated there are well over 100 research funding charities in cancer alone and we’ ve been thinking about how we could help some of the non-government charities to reduce the load on them and on our researchers,” he says.
Anderson also points to Cancer Research UK – a coalition of researchers that aims to reduce the administrative burden – as something that could be implemented in Australia.“ We are planning to see if we can help the non-government research funding system to collaborate, co-operate and make sure that the whole system is efficient for everybody.” ■
campusreview. com. au | 31