New and Improved: PCORI Opens its Second Year of Primary Research Funding

We at PCORI always say that we count on input from across the healthcare community to guide our research agenda and improve our processes. The latest example of how we make good on that practice goes to the heart of our work – issuing calls to fund patient-centered comparative effectiveness research (CER).

With today’s release of our latest cycle of broad PCORI Funding Announcements (PFAs), individuals seeking PCORI funding will notice more than a few changes when they visit our website. We’ve updated our five broad PFAs and our online application system in several ways that respond to feedback we received from applicants and others during our previous funding cycles. We heard your requests for greater clarity about the review criteria that we consider in selecting successful proposals and for a grants system that is easier to use.

The most important change visitors to the funding opportunities section of our website will see is a significant update of our review criteria.  Beginning with our August 2013 Cycle (what we used to call Cycle I, renamed to indicate the month and year applications are due), we will use five rather than eight core criteria to evaluate applications:

• Impact of the condition on the health of individuals and populations
• Potential for the study to improve healthcare and outcomes
• Technical merit
• Patient-centeredness
• Patient and stakeholder engagement

This change simplifies both the application and review processes and will help us to more efficiently fulfill our mission to fund the most promising patient-centered CER projects we can find. These five criteria preserve important elements from our initial criteria while eliminating redundancies that made the application process needlessly lengthy. This table illustrates how our new and previous criteria compare.

 

Our application guidelines now include greater detail on what we mean by the key concept of patient-centered CER. For example, we made it clearer that proposals must be comparative, meaning that they must evaluate choices faced by patients or other decision makers.  We’ve clarified further what we mean by stakeholder engagement within a research plan, noting that these individuals need to be involved throughout the study design and implementation. We’re developing examples of these concepts based on past successful applications that we have funded and will make them available soon to assist applicants.

In addition, applicants will find on our website two checklists, one to help them prepare their applications and one to serve as a final assurance that their applications are complete and comply with all criteria and requirements. Starting with this new funding cycle, applicants must follow the PCORI Methodology Standards in developing their research plans.  The standards guide researchers to the best methods for conducting patient-centered outcomes research. Better methods will produce trusted information and lead to better health care decisions and ultimately to better health.

To further help potential applicants navigate our process and criteria, we have improved and expanded the training sessions we offer online and via “Town Hall” webinars. More than 1,000 individuals have made use of these training opportunities since our first cycle. Our online trainings and “Town Hall” registration links and dates can be found on our website.

In addition, our senior leadership members have increased the number of presentations they’ve made to groups of researchers and other stakeholders to clarify our priorities and the specific elements we’re looking for in funding applications. The recent addition of our Chief Science Officer, Bryan Luce, PhD, MBA, and the continued growth of our Science Team will ensure we can reach directly even more individuals going forward.

Thanks to these efforts, we’ve already seen an increase in the number of applications that have responded fully to all criteria and other requirements, which is reflected in the volume of awards PCORI’s Board of Governors approved on May 6. Thank you for your feedback during our first full year of funding. Please continue providing feedback by e-mailing us at pfa@pcori.org. We’re listening.

At the point that this blog was published, Michael R. Dueñas was PCORI's Director of Contracts Management
Selby is PCORI’s Executive Director