PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Data-driven approach could help improve allocation of biomedical research resources

New method measures disparities between research resources and disease burden, identifies opportunities for future investment

2015-09-15
(Press-News.org) A new computational model developed by scientists from the University of Chicago could help improve the allocation of U.S. biomedical research resources. The tool, called the Research Opportunity Index (ROI), measures disparities between resources dedicated to a disease and its relative burden on society. ROI identifies diseases that receive a disproportionate share of biomedical resources, which represent opportunities for high-impact investment or for the realignment of existing resources. It is designed to provide an unbiased, data-driven framework to help scientific and political communities assess resource investment and identify unmet medical needs. ROI is described in the August issue of Nature Biotechnology.

"The misalignment of resources in biomedical research could be likened to poor budgeting of household finances," said senior study author Andrey Rzhetsky, PhD, professor of genetic medicine and senior fellow at the Institute for Genomics and Systems Biology at the University of Chicago. "It would be bad to spend all your money on food, for example, and have nothing for rent. Resources are finite and attention to each problem ideally should be proportional to the need."

The biomedical research community is increasingly faced with difficult choices when it comes to allocating finite resources, both human and financial. Meanwhile, there are few unbiased methods to determine how to focus resources for the best return on investment.

Rzhetsky and his colleagues addressed this problem by creating a mathematical framework called a Research Opportunity Index (ROI). It estimates the societal burden of 1,400 medical conditions in the U.S. over a 12-year timespan, based on frequency of diagnosis and health care insurance costs, as well as research publications, awarded grants and clinical trials for each condition. The index then calculates misalignments, allowing the team to create an "investment portfolio" of the resources dedicated to each disease, relative to its burden on the U.S. health care system.

The team found that breast cancer, for example, stands out as a disease with higher dedicated resources than its relative societal burden. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Hashimoto's thyroiditis falls among the conditions with the most investment potential. The autoimmune disorder is the most common cause of hypothyroidism and occurs when the immune system attacks the thyroid gland, disrupting the body's balance of hormones. While it has nearly the same incidence among women as breast cancer, there were only 16 open clinical trials for Hashimoto's disease as of August 2015, according to a list on clinicaltrials.gov. Breast cancer had 2,205.

Rzhetsky and his colleagues acknowledge that the question of what makes a condition more deserving of funding than any other ailment is complex and multifaceted. But the team hopes this new tool can help the community decide on how best to allocate funds and other resources. By providing a framework based on unbiased quantitative analytics and big data, they hope to identify diseases that are high-impact and rewarding targets for additional investment.

"Some diseases stick in the public's attention," Rzhetsky said. "We have a distorted map of the frequency and importance of events from media and articles, and without special efforts to reconcile the reality, we are inherently biased."

The team are now working to incorporate other models of funding distribution into their index to account for additional variables. For example, the "trendy model," which supports investment for diseases with large emotional impact, suggests that even though this reduces funding for other diseases, there may still be benefits as basic science discoveries are added to the scientific and medical community.

"With the availability of more and more data analytics in health care, it's the right time to use data to direct the investments of drug discovery and biomedical research for the common good," said the study's first author, Lixia Yao, PhD, assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

INFORMATION:

The study "Health ROI as a measure of misalignment in biomedical needs and resources" was funded by the US National Institutes of Health, GlaxoSmithKline Funds, and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte Research Grant. Additional authors include Ying Li, Soumitra Ghosh and James A Evans.



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Young chum salmon may get biggest nutrition boost from Elliott Bay restored beaches

Young chum salmon may get biggest nutrition boost from Elliott Bay restored beaches
2015-09-15
In the midst of ferry boats, container ships and tourists crowding Seattle's Elliott Bay, young salmon are just trying to get a decent meal. The fish hatch in the rivers and streams that feed into Puget Sound and almost immediately rely on eating small organisms near the shore, including in the heart of Seattle's commerce-filled waterfront. Though salmon share the busy Elliott Bay waters with boats and barges, scientists suspect built-up, "armored" shorelines and large piers may be the main culprits disrupting fish habitat. These artificial structures block light and ...

Electronic reminders can help tuberculosis patients stay on medication

2015-09-15
Reminders to take medication, delivered to patients via an electronic pillbox, may be able to improve adherence to tuberculosis (TB) treatment. The findings, reported this week in PLOS Medicine, are the result of a cluster randomized controlled trial by Shiwen Jiang of the Chinese Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, Katherine Fielding, of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and colleagues. The study randomized 36 districts in the provinces of Heilongjiang, Jiangsu, Hunan, and Chongqing, China to receive one of four approaches to tuberculosis case management: ...

Cohort study explores association between SSRI use and violent crime

2015-09-15
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) use is modestly associated with violent crime, according to a study published this week in PLOS Medicine. The cohort study, by Seena Fazel from the University of Oxford, and colleagues, showed in subgroup analysis that this association was evident in participants aged 15-24, but not significant for individuals aged 25 and older. SSRIs are widely prescribed, but inconclusive evidence links SSRI use with violent behavior. In this study, Fazel and colleagues compared the rate of violent crime while individuals were prescribed ...

Electronic reminders keep TB patients on track with medication in China

2015-09-15
Giving electronic reminders to tuberculosis (TB) patients in China can reduce the amount of medication doses they miss by half, according to new research published in PLOS Medicine. Researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK, and the National Center for Tuberculosis Control and Prevention, China, conducted a trial with 4,173 patients from the provinces of Heilongjiang, Jiangsu, Hunan, and Chongqing. Patients either received text message reminders, an electronic medication monitor, both, or no reminders for their six month treatment period. Patients ...

A better look at religion's influence on political attitudes

2015-09-15
Measuring how religion affects a person's political attitudes and behavior can provide powerful insight to everyone from pundits to presidents. Now there's a new strategy to gather better, more nuanced perspective on that religious influence than ever before, developed by University of Cincinnati researchers. UC's Andrew Lewis and Stephen Mockabee presented research titled "Measuring Biblical Interpretation and Its Influence on Political Attitudes" at the American Political Science Association's annual meeting earlier this month in San Francisco. The association serves ...

New way to repair nerves: Using exosomes to hijack cell-to-cell communication

2015-09-15
MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. (Sept. 15, 2015) -- Regenerative medicine using stem cells is an increasingly promising approach to treat many types of injury. Transplanted stem cells can differentiate into just about any other kind of cell, including neurons to potentially reconnect a severed spinal cord and repair paralysis. A variety of agents have been shown to induce transplanted stem cells to differentiate into neurons. Tufts University biomedical engineers recently published the first report of a promising new way to induce human mesenchymal stem cells (or hMSCs, which ...

Twenty-five years ago Professor Thomas Jentsch opened up a new field of research

2015-09-15
A quarter of a century ago, the physicist, physician and cell biologist Professor Thomas Jentsch and his research team opened up an entirely new field of research in the field of ion transport. Now the British journal "The Journal of Physiology"* has devoted a special section in its latest issue to his discovery. In this issue (DOI: 10.1113/jphysiol.2014.270043), Professor Jentsch, who leads a research group at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association (MDC) and at the neighboring Leibniz-Institut für Molekulare Pharmakologie ...

Students in credit crisis

2015-09-15
New research from the USA suggests that college students are well aware that they should be personally responsible for their finances, including their card obligations, but this awareness rarely correlates with limiting the debts they accrue during their time in higher education. Details of the study are reported this month in the International Journal of Behavioural Accounting and Finance. Lucy Ackert of the Department of Economics and Finance, at Kennesaw State University, in Georgia, and Bryan Church of the Scheller College of Business, at Georgia Tech, Atlanta, ...

Dew helps ground cloud computing

2015-09-15
The most obvious disadvantage of putting your data in the cloud is losing access when you have no internet connection. According to research publishes in the International Journal of Cloud Computing, this is where "dew" could help. Yingwei Wang of the Department of Computer Science, at the University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, Canada, describes what he refers to as a "cloud-dew" architecture that offers an efficient and elegant way to counteract cloud downtime and communication difficulties. In the world of cloud computing, users and organizations keep their ...

Sweeping study of US farm data shows loss of crop diversity the past 34 years

2015-09-15
MANHATTAN, KANSAS - U.S. farmers are growing fewer types of crops than they were 34 years ago, which could have implications for how farms fare as changes to the climate evolve, according to a large-scale study by Kansas State University, North Dakota State University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Less crop diversity may also be impacting the general ecosystem. "At the national level, crop diversity declined over the period we analyzed," said Jonathan Aguilar, K-State water resources engineer and lead researcher on the study. The scientists used data from ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

What’s behind the enormous increase in early-onset gastrointestinal cancers?

Pharmacogenomics expert advances precision medicine for bipolar disorder

Brazilian researcher explores centenarian stem cells for aging insights

Dr. Xuyu Qian's breakthrough analysis of 18 million brain cells advances understanding of human brain development

Gene networks decode human brain architecture from health to glioma

How artificial light at night damages brain health and metabolism

For ultrasound, ultra-strength not always a good thing

Matching your workouts to your personality could make exercising more enjoyable and give you better results

Study shows people perceive biodiversity

Personality type can predict which forms of exercise people enjoy

People can accurately judge biodiversity through sight and sound

People diagnosed with dementia are living longer, global study shows

When domesticated rabbits go feral, new morphologies emerge

Rain events could cause major failure of Waikīkī storm drainage by 2050

Breakthrough in upconversion luminescence research: Uncovering the energy back transfer mechanism

Hidden role of 'cell protector' opens cancer treatment possibilities

How plants build the microbiome they need to survive in a tough environment

Depression due to politics and its quiet danger to democracy addressed in new book 'The Sad Citizen'

International experts and patients unite to help ensure all patients are fully informed before consenting to new surgical procedures

Melting glaciers could trigger more explosive eruptions globally, finds research

Nearly half of U.S. grandchildren live within 10 miles of a grandparent

Study demonstrates low-cost method to remove CO₂ from air using cold temperatures, common materials

Masonic Medical Research Institute (MMRI) welcomes 13 students to prestigious Summer Fellowship program

Mass timber could elevate hospital construction

A nuanced model of soil moisture illuminates plant behavior and climate patterns

$2.6 million NIH grant backs search for genetic cure in deadly heart disease

Pennsylvania’s medical cannabis program changed drastically when anxiety was added as a qualifying condition

1 in 5 overweight adults could be reclassified with obesity according to new framework

Findings of study on how illegally manufactured fentanyl enters U.S. contradict common assumptions, undermining efforts to control supply

Satellite observations provide insight into post-wildfire forest recovery

[Press-News.org] Data-driven approach could help improve allocation of biomedical research resources
New method measures disparities between research resources and disease burden, identifies opportunities for future investment