An independent advisory committee released a 73-page report outlining its first set of
recommendations for spending $1.1 billion in comparative-effectiveness research funding allocated under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Written by the 15-member Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research, the report, set for release Tuesday, focuses on how HHS’ Office of the Secretary should best use the $400 million in comparative-effectiveness funding it received earlier this year.
The council recommended that the Office of the Secretary use it funds to fill high-priority gaps that are less likely to be funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the National Institutes of Health, which received $300 million and $400 million in funding, respectively.
According to the report, the Office of the Secretary’s priorities should be creating a data infrastructure and developing distributed electronic data networks and patient registries. The group recommended that dissemination and translation of comparative-effectiveness data be secondary priorities, and that funding of actual research be a distant priority as other federal agencies are likely to pour their funds into supporting clinical outcomes research.
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