NIH Extramural Nexus

You may remember back in June I asked for your input regarding revisions to the current OMB Circular A-21. Many thanks to all those who responded to the request for information. We have now posted a summary of the public comments, along with other information about the A-21 Task Force on the Research Business Models website. 

As you can see from the summary, we received 154 comments. The majority of which were from institutions of higher education, with some responses from medical centers, research institutes, associations, and individuals. Overall, the comments indicated that universities are highly affected by the burden of Circular A-21 and other federal requirements. The most prevalent topic addressed was the significant administrative burden to the scientific staff due to the effort reporting requirement and lack of ability to directly charge administrative and project management support staff. The responders were also greatly concerned with the consistency of overhead costs as well as consistency of regulatory and compliance burdens among various regulations and agencies.

The task force considered this input and is preparing its recommendations for actions to the reduce administrative burden, enhance the productivity of researchers, and streamline federal requirements, while maintaining sound stewardship of federally sponsored projects awarded to institutions of higher education.

Mark your calendars for a financial conflict of interest webinar on November 30^th from 2 to 3:30 pm eastern time. I, and others, will describe what has changed since the regulation was revised and how the changes will affect you. We’ll provide information for both administrators and investigators, with some time for questions at the end. All institutions applying for or receiving NIH funding must implement the new regulation by August 24, 2012. So if you are a current grantee or hope to be one in the future, I suggest you watch.

You don’t need to register in advance. On the day of the event view the broadcast here. If you can’t make the live broadcast we will be posting the recording on our website a few days after the event.

Update 12/1: Thanks to those who attended. A recording will be available in a few days. View the slideset here.

It’s been a while since I mentioned our Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs. Several events have brought them to the forefront at NIH, so I thought now would be a good time to talk about them. For those of you who have not heard of our Small Business Programs, all federal agencies with an extramural research budget of more than $100M are congressionally mandated to set aside 2.5% to fund research and development on technology targeted for commercialization performed by eligible small businesses. Another 0.3% is set aside for technology transfer, which requires a partnership between a small business and a research institution. Among all federal agencies, NIH’s small business program is the second largest. We have a whole section on our RePORT website where you can find interesting data about the program.

Let me tell you about the myriad of activities that are impacting our SBIR and STTR programs in various ways. First, last week, President Obama released a memo in which he asked the heads of federal agencies to accelerate technology transfer and commercialization of federal research. As you might imagine, this is particularly applicable to our small business programs; in fact, SBIR and STTR programs are specifically called out in the memo, with the President asking us to look at best practices for managing these programs.   

This seems to be a topic on everyone’s mind as a few weeks ago Dr. Collins, the NIH Director, asked NIH’s Scientific Management Review Board to recommend strategies for optimizing the NIH Small Business Programs. He mentioned finding ways to foster innovation, attract quality proposals, and ensure success with our grantees. The board will be working over the course of the next year to come up with recommendations that likely will touch on the same areas the President mentioned.

Finally, congressional reauthorization of the programs is currently underway—the programs have been under a series of extensions since late 2008. Reauthorization represents an opportunity to make important changes to the program. There are several possible provisions in the reauthorization being considered by both sides of Congress, many of which affect the NIH programs. We will continue to update you on the status of the reauthorization on our website.

NIH is committed to the continued success of all our programs, and we look forward to helping maximize the investments we are making in our nation’s small businesses as a way to support innovation and economic development.