Device Comparative Effectiveness Studies Received $40 Mil. From NIH In '09

Article preview reprinted from "The Gray Sheet" - January 13, 2010

The National Institutes of Health handed out about $40 million of its comparative effectiveness research funds in 2009 to studies directly impacting devices, with more than two-thirds of that money targeting medical imaging or in vitro diagnostics applications. Read more...

Device Comparative Effectiveness Studies Received $40 Mil. From NIH In '09

Article preview reprinted from "The Gray Sheet" - January 13, 2010

The National Institutes of Health handed out about $40 million of its comparative effectiveness research funds in 2009 to studies directly impacting devices, with more than two-thirds of that money targeting medical imaging or in vitro diagnostics applications.

Also, more than one-third of the funded device studies include some element of explicit cost or cost-effectiveness comparisons, in addition to pure clinical comparisons.

The device-focused spending was a notable portion of the nearly $200 million NIH spent in 2009 from its American Reinvestment and Recovery Act comparative effectiveness research funds. The agency plans to spend the rest of its $400 million in ARRA comparative effectiveness research money in 2010.

The economic stimulus bill provided a total of $1.1 billion for CER efforts; the other $700 million is controlled by different segments of the Department of Health and Human Services, which plan to use most of their funds on yet-to-be-announced 2010 projects (The Gray Sheet' Aug. 10, 2009).

Multiple Studies Comparing Imaging, Lab Tests

According to an online database of NIH stimulus package spending, the agency funded a variety of types of comparative effectiveness projects in the first year, including head-to-head studies of different treatment, diagnostic or screening technologies; efforts to build needed research infrastructure, such as registries; and assessments of how health system reforms impact health outcomes.

Studies involving medical imaging received the most funds among device-focused CER studies, consistent with the close scrutiny by policymakers in recent years on the rate of spending growth for advanced imaging.

For instance, NIH awarded several grants to study the value of noninvasive imaging tools to diagnose or assess patients with coronary artery disease.

About $9 million went to research centers involved in the 10,000-patient PROMISE trial comparing coronary computed tomography angiography to standard cardiac stress testing for diagnosing patients with suspected heart disease. And there is separate funding for a study comparing standard myocardial perfusion imaging to CT and positron emission tomography as a tool to diagnose and risk-assess heart disease patients.

- David Filmore

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