NIH Funding By the Numbers

The National Institutues of Health, at the request of Congress, has created a fascintating online tool that outlines how much they spend on 215 conditions, diseases, and research projects. Located at http://www.report.nih.gov/rcdc/categories/Default.aspx, the online spreadsheet provides dollars spent from FY 2005 to FY 2008 in a searchable and sortable format. Here's a word from the site:

At the request of Congress, the NIH embarked on a process to provide better consistency and transparency in the reporting of its funded research. This new process, implemented through the Research, Condition, and Disease Categorization (RCDC) system, uses sophisticated text data mining (categorizing and clustering using words and multiword phrases) in conjunction with NIH-wide definitions used to match projects to categories. The definitions are a list of terms and concepts selected by NIH scientific experts to define a research category.

What's most interesting about his dataset is how you can compare and contrast, with hard numbers, what the NIH funds from year to year. Here's the link again: http://www.report.nih.gov/rcdc/categories/Default.aspx

As for the smaller number of updates as of late, don't worry. In the coming weeks, the Healthy Turtle will have some big news on the planned building renovation, grant announcements, events, and various other happenings in and around the school. Stay tuned...
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Thanks to Dr. Pam Clark for pointing us toward this item.