CIHR will need $400 million in new funding to meet the operational needs of new health research infrastructure

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) will require more than $400 million by 2010 to provide sufficient operational support for a host of high-impact research infrastructure projects now coming on stream. That's the amount a new CIHR-commissioned report estimates is required to fund researchers associated with the $2.9 billion worth of major health infrastructure awards made by the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and matching funds since 1999 are fully operational.

The report – CIHR Funding Pressures resulting from High Impact Health Infrastructure Investments — indicates that for every $1 billion invested in health research infrastructure, approximately $270 million should be invested in additional associated operational funding, of which CIHR's share is 54% or $146 million.

Since the creation of the CFI, there has been considerable anecdotal evidence and much discussion about the impact its investments are having on the granting agencies. But this report is the first thorough analysis of the relationship between the two types of funding and underlines the need for a systems approach to public research funding. It contains a wealth of data on the impact CFI investments in health research are having on the pace of research, increases in grant sizes, the lifespan of health infrastructure, the ability of researchers to collaborate domestically and internationally and the success of institutions in recruiting world-class talent to Canada.

"High impact health infrastructure projects represent a major contribution to Canada's research capacity. New state-of-the-art facilities and scientific equipment are increasing the potential of Canada's research community. This new infrastructure has played a large role in attracting world-class researchers from other countries," states the report.

Institutions that have received high impact projects have recruited more than 1,400 researchers out of 3,200 who have been recruited to all health infrastructure projects. The use of the new infrastructure and the growing dominance of multidisciplinary research teams have also resulted in rapidly escalating grant costs.

Between 1998 and 2005, 19 institutions received health infrastructure awards of at least $15 million. These institutions accounted for 91% of the value of CFI health awards during that period and the growth rates of their CIHR awards nearly doubled, rising from 46% of CIHR grant funding in FY00-01 to 60% in FY05-06. In FY06-07, the average grant size for those institutions was $175,000. In just one year, the average had increase by 18% to $207,000.

The British Columbia Cancer Research Centre (BCCRC) is one of the largest high impact health infrastructure research projects, costing $95 million to construct and opening in 2004. Once operational, the number and value of CIHR grants rose to $6.1 million, nearly triple the average CIHR support prior to FY03-04.

"An understanding of health research funding pressures from new high impact infrastructure constitutes a major challenge for CIHR and for governments that understandably wish to achieve the most productive use of infrastructure to which public funds have been committed."

— CIHR Funding Pressures study

The report calculated funding pressures as the "annual value of CIHR grant expenditure plus the estimated value of grant applications that exceeded the peer review threshold for funding but could not be funded due to budget constraints".

funding mismatch

Another concern over the mismatch between infrastructure funding and operational support is the relatively short lifespan of the infrastructure being funded. Due to the long period between the announcement of CFI awards and project completion, the impacts of awards made since 1999 are only now becoming evident. For example, in FY05-06, only $56.3 million of projects at the Univ of British Columbia has been completed out of the $381 million in projects awarded to the institution.

Of the 161 projects covered by the survey, 48 were fully developed, 94 were partially developed and 19 were not sufficiently developed to support research. The report states that 93% of fully developed projects and 76% of partially developed projects experienced full utilization or excess demand .

Given that new equipment has an average lifespan of seven years, shortfalls in operational funding translate into significant under-utilization (see below).

The report says that 48% of partially developed projects have more than six years of useful life remaining, compared with 33% for those that are fully developed.

The CIHR report contains extensive summaries of interviews that were conducted for the study. These senior stakeholders were primarily VPs research from universities and research hospitals. There was consensus on the need for new collaborative models to achieve operational funding success, as research teams are becoming the norm. Others stressed the importance of a systems approach to "achieve results in high priority areas".

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