All change for funding of medical research in the United Kingdom

doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7548.994

BMJ 2006;332:994 (29 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7548.994

News

All change for funding of medical research in the United Kingdom

Susan Mayor

London

Researchers have long wanted a simpler method for allocatingresearch funds in the UK. A new distribution process is in theoffing—though precise details are lacking, Susan Mayorreports

Far reaching changes to the funding of academic medical researchin the United Kingdom are on the horizon, with two new initiativesannounced by the chancellor in his recent prebudget speech.

Firstly, the budgets from the two existing streams for the publicfunding of medical research, the Medical Research Council andNHS Research, will be merged. And secondly, the current systemfor allocating research funding to UK universities—theresearch assessment exercise (RAE)—is being scrapped afterthe 2008 exercise.

The current system is based on a peer review process, intendedto direct limited research funds go to centres of excellence.In its place, a simpler "metrics based" system is being proposed—onethat would be based on readily available figures. This mightbe a university's total research income from non-governmentsources, such as research councils, industry, and charities,which has previously been shown to correlate with research fundingallocated by the RAE.

In his speech on 22 March, the chancellor, Gordon Brown, saidthat one of his aims was to increase investment in science inthe UK: "Britain will in future have a single budget for the[MRC] and NHS Research. It will be worth at least £1bn[ ${euro}$ 1.44bn; $1.78bn] a year." He noted, "America has its pathbreakingNational Institutes of Health. And we will now build agreementon the right design and institutional arrangements for the Britishmodel."

The MRC is a national organisation funded by UK tax revenue,which currently funds research in all areas of medical and relatedscience—£546m in 2007-8. NHS Research is the researchdivision of the Department of Health, and it provided £753min 2006-7. Under the proposals, their budgets will be mergedto create a single fund that is allocated for research. Detailsof how the merged fund will be administered are still beingdeveloped.

A report, Science and Innovation Investment Framework 2004-2014:Next Steps, which was published at the same time as the budget,explains that the change is designed to provide "a more coherentframework for health research and development."

It has been suggested that the ring fencing arrangement mightbe designed to prevent research funds given to the NHS beingdiverted to patient care. Nancy Rothwell, MRC research professorat the University of Manchester, said, "The strong feeling isthat in some trusts the research and development money is proppingup patient care."

Colin Blakemore, the MRC's chief executive, said, "The establishmentof a single, jointly held health research fund will hugely facilitatethe translation of research findings into clinical benefitsfor people in the UK and around the world."

Scrapping the RAE system is the second major change to the allocationof funding for research.

Under the RAE, the quality of higher education research is assessedby peer review. This is led by discipline based panels usingwritten submissions from universities, including informationon the outputs of staff working in research. Institutions aregiven a score that determines their research funding allocation.They are ranked in terms of research status—with a 5^*ranking (the top grade) conferring huge status, as well as funding.The system has had massive impact, with departments losing staffand even being closed if they failed to achieve top rankingand thereby lost out on research funds.

The Next Steps report argued that the RAE had improved researchquality, but that it was now associated with substantial administrativecosts, estimated at £45m for the 2008 RAE, pushing researchprogrammes and staff into cyclical patterns and failing to rewardinterdisciplinary or more innovative research. It is proposedthat the new system would be based on a more straightforwardassessment procedure.

Eric Thomas, the vice chancellor of the University of Bristol,said that the RAE had served its purpose and should now be replacedwith a more efficient system: "It grossly distorts planningand its cycle is asynchronous with any research cycle. Insteadof institutions planning to do the best research, the best knowledgecreation, they talk about `planning for the RAE.' It createsa massive planning blight for the 18 months up to the exerciseand for the 18 months afterwards until the results are published."

The RAE rapidly becomes historical, Professor Thomas pointedout, noting that research funding in 2006 is based on researchthat was published 10 years ago. "Metrics related to either[MRC] or total research income would produce much the same resultas [the] RAE but would be timely—related to current researchactivity rather than historical data," he concluded.

Steve Smith, the vice chancellor of the University of Exeter,argued that the RAE had been effective in mapping the performanceof academic staff and had provided flexible funding that couldbe used for a variety of purposes. He said that the RAE hadbeen vital in setting up the Peninsula Medical School, whichwas established in 2002. It would have been impossible withfunding from specific research councils, he said.

Professor Smith acknowledged that a metrics based system mightwork quite well in medicine and some areas of science that arewidely funded by research councils. "But it would not work atall well in the humanities, as other research grants in theseareas are very small." It would also shift funding between differentcentres, he argued, based on recent research showing that usingmetrics, defined as research council income, to assess researchfunding would rank institutions very differently compared tothe RAE. "Five of the top 10 institutions ranked on fundingusing one system move to the bottom using the other system,"he said.

The minister for higher education, Bill Rammell, has set upa working group to develop the successor to the RAE. Consultationon the government's proposals will run from May until October2006. Final decisions will be announced in time for this year'sprebudget report. (See editorial p 983.)