State of the Research Enterprise in IR and Recommendations for the Future: Proceedings from the Society of Interventional Radiology Foundation Investigator Development Task Force

Erik N.K. Cressman*, Isabel Newton, Andrew C. Larson, David A. Woodrum, Govind Srimathveeravalli, Michael J. Borrelli, Stephen Hunt, Thor Johnson, Charles Y. Kim, Sarah White, Philippe L. Pereira, Konstantinos Katsanos, Ron C. Gaba

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalEditorialpeer-review

7 Scopus citations
Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)751-757
Number of pages7
JournalJournal of Vascular and Interventional Radiology
Volume29
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2018

Funding

S.W. receives grants and research support from Guerbet (Villepinte, France), research support from Siemens (Munich, Germany), and personal fees from Cook (Bloomington, Indiana). None of the other authors have identified a conflict of interest. A key goal of the SIRF grant program is to improve patient care by providing investigators with resources for generating preliminary data for extramural funding. Although SIRF funding is modest, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and similar funding sources provide a level of support that allows a research enterprise to be sustainable. The IDTF examined the NIH funding success of SIRF Pilot and Ring grant awardees over an extended period. The SIRF has seen robust growth in the number of investigators applying for support, with 2- and 5-fold increases in applications for the Pilot and Ring mechanisms over 9 years, respectively ( Fig 1 ). However, although a total of 53 SIRF grants (46 Pilot and 7 Ring) were awarded in the 2008–2017 funding cycles, only 2 (4%) of those SIRF awardees subsequently secured NIH funding. The IDTF then examined how many Pilot grant recipients later applied for a Ring award. Only 4 pilot grant recipients (9%) applied for a Ring award and only 1 of those (25%) was actually awarded the grant. In comparison, 88 applications from 67 investigators did not receive SIRF funding during the same time period, of which 3 investigators (3%) later received NIH funding. In summary, a SIRF award was neither as effective as desired nor sufficient to guarantee sustained research activity. Notably, the Pilot and/or Ring conversion to larger funding may be underrepresented by not including those funded by nontraditional mechanisms (non-NIH grant programs) and by the medical industry.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Radiology Nuclear Medicine and imaging
  • Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine

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