Dr Jacques Magnan

The evolving relationship between science and society: from AHFMR to AIHS

By Dr Jacques Magnan

In 2010, the Government of Alberta created Alberta Innovates - Health Solutions (AIHS) to build on the legacy of excellence of its predecessor, the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research (AHFMR). The AHFMR formula for supporting research was simple, well-defined, and well-understood: invest in quality people and quality research will follow. So, why mess with that?

Part of the answer is that scientific research does not (and should not) operate in an isolated and self-contained ecosystem. It takes place within the broad, dynamic, social and economic context in which we all work and live. As that context changes and evolves, so does the interaction between science and society.

The evolution of our organization illustrates this. The Alberta government created AHFMR in 1980 with a very specific intent that was socially relevant to the times. Alberta had a new medical faculty at the University of Calgary and a successful and long-standing medical faculty at the University of Alberta with considerable expertise in particular research areas. AHFMR was created as a vehicle to support the universities in building a strong capacity for biomedical research in Alberta. Underlying this model was the core belief that high-quality research would lead in time to high-quality outcomes for health, the economy, and Alberta.

AHFMR turned out to be an excellent model for doing precisely what was intended: invest in outstanding individuals to build capacity. Its programs brought a continuous flow of very talented people to Alberta over the 30 years of its existence. During that period, AHFMR leveraged an investment of more than $1 billion to almost $4 billion in outside investments into the province. The investment also led to many research outputs (high per capita publication rates) and some noteworthy innovations (the Edmonton Protocol, antiviral treatments for hepatitis, and the discovery of neural stem cells).

But the research context has changed both in Alberta and globally. The initial funding model developed in 1980 was open-ended and provided little specificity about either expected outcomes or their timelines. Global trends over the past 15 to 20 years have shaped a research funding approach that puts more focus on accountability linked to outcomes and on timely returns on investment.

Health research has also evolved into a major enterprise during that same period. Thirty years ago, Canada had a handful of health-research funding agencies. Now there are dozens in the federal, provincial, private industry, and philanthropic domains. The investments are also much larger. Since 1980, organizational budgets have climbed steadily and the costs of technological infrastructure and operations mean that research awards in the tens of millions of dollars are not uncommon. There is a growing impetus to create shared value between science and society; this means opening and maintaining different lines of communication between researchers, funders, and investors.

Research is also much more competitive. Not only are more people applying for limited funds, but research must also compete with other worthy and costly societal activities. While the basic principle of "quality research leads to quality outcomes" still holds, the questions become: can we target our investments to get targeted outcomes? Can we accelerate the transfer of knowledge into applications? Can we maximize the use of the knowledge generated by research within our communities, health systems, and throughout society? And, can we do all this within defined and reasonable timelines?

This is the context underpinning the creation of AIHS and the redesign of the entire research and innovation landscape in Alberta and elsewhere in the country. We have updated our contract with Albertans to direct and emphasize the impact of publicly funded research on their quality of life, both socially and economically. This evolution is not as much of a departure from the past as it seems. At AHFMR, we saw our public endowment-based funding as a gift from the people of Alberta and our responsibility was to give back to the people the value-added from that research. That responsibility was a general principle then; today it is a social imperative that has led to our evolution.

We rolled out the first new AIHS research funding opportunities at the start of this year. These opportunities were developed through consultations with thousands of people to determine just what our funding and support should look like in this changed context. The extensive community consultation was the first step in identifying and addressing the needs, opportunities, and gaps of importance to all our stakeholder groups — researchers as well as users of research knowledge: the public, patient groups, private industry, government, the healthcare sector, post-secondary institutions, and others.

The most visible change in our new opportunities is a rebalance in our portfolio. We've moved from a primary focus on long-term, open-ended, curiosity-driven investments to a broader focus which includes more short- and medium-term issues with anticipated timelines for knowledge use and innovation application.

Rather than establishing defined funding programs — which tend to become rapidly institutionalized — our stakeholders recommended that AIHS create and broker "opportunities". In some cases, the opportunity is to build on existing research strength in order to achieve a major breakthrough or impact; in others, to move knowledge closer to a point where it is applicable. We heard that we need to move from the support of individuals to funding opportunities for cross-sectoral, multidisciplinary collaborative activity to achieve success in priority areas for the province.

All of our new funding opportunities have a clear line of sight to priority health areas defined in Alberta's Health Research and Innovation Strategy. These areas — mental health and addictions, child and maternal health, infectious disease, chronic disease, as well as health services research — are where transformational change would have the most impact and value.

Our evolution brings new philosophies and new ways of doing things. AIHS no longer simply provides money. We also manage funding investments on behalf of the public as a partner focused on research outputs and their translational outcomes. By rebalancing our approach to funding health research, we want to make our province's investment even more valuable, both to the researchers themselves and to society.

Dr Jacques Magnan is CEO of Alberta Innovates - Health Solutions.