Capitalizing on New Needs and New Opportunities Government-Industry Partnerships in Biotechnology and Information Technologies (2001) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Recent Trends in the Federal Funding of Research and Development Related to Health and Information Technology
Recent Trends in the Federal Funding of Research and Development Related to Health and Information Technology
Pages 261-292
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From page 261... ...
In broad terms, federal investment in biomedical research has expanded relative to federal investment in most fields of the physical sciences and engineering. That shift has raised the question of whether the federal research portfolio has become "imbalanced." The paper analyzes the shifts in funding of research fields, compares them with nonfederal trends, and discusses the implications of the reductions in funding during the 1990s of many fields in the physical scienc.
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From page 262... ...
Federal investment in the life sciences2 and IT3 increased many-fold from the 1950s to the 1990s. In the 1990s, however, efforts to reduce the federal budget deficit and the post-Cold War reductions in the defense budget affected federal R&D funding in terms of both amount where funding was reduced for several yearsand composition where some research fields expanded greatly relative to others.
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However, support of the biological sciences and the medical sciences differs by degree (see Figure 3~. Federal obligations for medical sciences increased more than that for biological sciences, especially in the first half of the decade.
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to 3 a) ·° 2 m o 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 Biological Sciences Electrical Engineering Medical Sciences Computer Science FIGURE 3 Federal funding of selected fields, FY 1990-2000.
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From page 265... ...
Biological Sciences Federal obligations for biological research increased by 28 percent from 1990 to 1999 in real terms, from $5.0 billion to $6.5 billion (see Figure 4~. That increase was driven by NIH's steady budget growth in the 1990s of 67 percent.
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From page 266... ...
Medical Sciences Federal funding of medical sciences increased by 65 percent from 1990 to 1999, from $4.1 billion to $6.8 billion (see Figure 5~. NIH accounted for 82 percent of federal funding of the medical sciences in 1999, 9 up from 75 percent in 1990, and NIH's steady budget growth during those years has permitted the agency to make such a large increase in funding.
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From page 267... ...
In addition to scientific opportunities and technological ripeness, the increase in federal funding of computer science research (and research in related fields) was driven by the high priority accorded it by successive administrations.
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In the FY 2002 budget, the effort is continued as the Networking and Information Technology R&D Program. Actual budget authority for the interagency initiative tracks the increase in spending on computer science research (Table 1~.
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From page 269... ...
The ratio of basic to applied research increased from 1 to 3.4 in 1990 to 1 to 2.7 in 1999. Although federal obligations for electrical engineering declined by 10 percent from 1990 to 1999, funding for basic and university research increased, by 4 percent and 14 percent, respectively, indicating that the cuts were made in applied research and performers other than academic institutions.l2 Basic research rose from 23 percent of total federal funding Compare Appendix Table 7 with Appendix Table 6.
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From page 270... ...
The federal government provides the largest portion of basic research support, 49 percent, and industry provides 34 percent (see Figure 9~. The federal government may not need to continue funding research in areas where industry is investing its own funds.
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From page 271... ...
The academic survey uses a set of fields very similar to the classification of fields used in the federal funds survey, but the inclusion of development with research makes the results non-comparable with the data collected in the federal funds survey. A third NSF survey the annual survey of industrial R&D expenditures classifies research of each company by a single industrial classification (SIC)
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From page 272... ...
. Assuming that the biopharmaceutical industry devotes the same percent of its R&D funding to basic research that drugs and medicine companies reported to NSF in 1998 17.4 13See National Science Board, Science and Engineering Indicators—2000, Arlington, VA: National Science Foundation (NSB 00-01)
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NOTE: Federal R&D funds are fiscal year obligations, company R&D funds are calendar year expenditures, and academic R&D funds are fiscal year expenditures. percent and that one-third of nonfederal funding of university R&D is for basic research, approximately $12.5 billion, or 34 percent of the total funding of life sciences R&D, went to basic research in 1998.18 Information Technology R&D Two sources of funding account for most R&D in information technology.
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From page 274... ...
Nonfederal academic R&D funding increased steadily from $80 million in 1981 to $350 million in 1998. According to the NSF industry survey, which expanded its coverage of the service sector in 1995, R&D on software and data processing services is also large and fast-growing.
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From page 275... ...
.20 RECENT TRENDS IN FEDERAL FUNDING OF THE BASIC RESEARCH BASE Merrill, McGeary, and Henderson recently updated a 1999 study by McGeary and Merrill on trends in federal funding of fields of science and engineering.21 The first study analyzed data on actual federal research expenditures from FY 1990 through FY 1997, especially trends after 1993, when pressures from the federal budget deficit and reductions in the defense budget had stopped real growth in federal research budgets.22 The update extends the analysis to FY 1999, the latest year for which there are data on actual expenditures. The 1999 study tested the hypothesis that certain fields of science and engineering would do less well in budgetary terms because the agencies that provide most of their federal research funding were reducing their level of investment in research.
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From page 276... ...
Moreover, all agencies except DOD and the Department of the Interior now had larger research budgets, although NIH accounted for most of the net growth in research funding since 1993.24 Fewer fields had less funding than in 1993 7 of 21 compared with 11 of 21 in 1997 but 5 of them (including electrical engineering) had at least 20 percent less funding compared with 4 in 1997.
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From page 278... ...
They have noted that "...a strong federal research enterprise requires a balanced portfolio across the scientific and engineering disciplines. Many breakthroughs in medical research and treatment, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
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In the IT area, for example, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, General Manager of IBM's Internet Division, told the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) that government must take the lead in funding long-term research because industry must focus on being successful in the marketplace by developing competitive products and services and is facing increasingly short development cycles.
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From page 281... ...
Each received a substantial increase in 1999, which put them ahead of 1990 by 37 percent and 13 percent, respectively. Because 1999 was the first year of the 5-year campaign to double the NIH budget, the rate of growth for basic research in the biological and medical sciences can be expected to increase substantially from the 2.7 percent and 6.5 percent annual compound rates of growth they experienced from 1990 to 1999, respectively.
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Engineering Trends in federal obligations for basic research in engineering varied by field (see Figure 15~. Metallurgy/materials engineering experienced substantial growth, especially from 1993 to 1996.
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FEDERAL HEALTH AND IT R&D TRENDS 283 ol 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 + Physics ~ Astronomy ~ Chemistry FIGURE 16 Trends in federal funding of basic research in the physical sciences, FY 1990-1999. SOURCE: Appendix Table 13.
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in mathematics increased by 14 percent from 1990 to 1999, but the 1999 level was 6 percent lower than it was in 1994. CONCLUSION Federal and nonfederal funding of research related to the core fields of health (biological sciences and medical sciences)
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Funding Trends in the Core Fields of Health and IT R&D Federal funding has been moving into the hot fields central to health and IT R&D. For example, funding of biological sciences and medical sciences increased 28 percent and 65 percent, respectively, in real terms, from 1990 to 1999.
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From page 286... ...
In some cases, they are receiving less in absolute terms than earlier in the decade. Fields increasing at a rate less than the biological, medical, and computer sciences since 1993 include environmental biology, agriculture, materials engineering, mathematics, atmospheric science, psychology, and the social sciences.
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From page 287... ...
In such circumstances, one person's idea of research portfolio imbalance can well be another's notion of what constitutes a healthy investment in a "hot" area of research though both may honestly seek to meet major national goals through their respective proposals. In the case at hand, some core fields in health and IT research are expanding rapidly and are accounting for most of the increase in federal funding in recent years (three fields the biological, medical, and computer sciences received more than two-thirds of the net increase in federal funding of research from 1990 to 1999~.
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From page 288... ...
In this approach, for example, the federal research portfolio is out of balance to the extent that progress in health research depends on fields other than the biological and medical sciences that are not receiving funding commensurate with their role. This situation came about because decision-making on health research historically has assumed that funding for the other important disciplines would be provided by other agencies (for example, chemistry, physics, and chemical engineering)
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From page 289... ...
Thus the argument shifts from saying, say, NIH gets too much to saying, say, physics does not get enough, in part because of its role in improving health among many other worthy applications such as computing and other information technologies. Each of the approaches to assessing the federal research portfolio outlined above would examine the magnitude of the shift among fields that took place in the mid-199Os, focus on fields that stopped growing or began shrinking, examine their importance to the nation's leadership in science and technology, and ask if the decentralized decision-making that led to no or negative funding growth makes sense from an overall point of view.
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From page 290... ...
1999. "Recent Trends in Federal Spending on Scientific and Engineering Research: Impacts on Research Fields and Graduate Training," Appendix A in National Research Council, Securing America's Industrial Strength.
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From page 291... ...
1999. "Information Technology: Transforming Our Society," presentation at the seventh meeting of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee, February 17.
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