PCORI Funding Announcements (PFAs) Highlighted in Annals of Internal Medicine

Two articles published online in the Annals of Internal Medicine take note of our initial round of funding announcements, what makes them different from traditional research funding, and the opportunities and challenges we face going forward.

PCORI Board of Governors member Harlan Krumholz, MD, SM, and Executive Director Joe Selby, MD, MPH, note in their article that the introduction of our PFAs “heralds an era of patient-centeredness in research, promoting science that sees through the eyes of patients.

“PCORI will invest more than $3 billion between now and 2019 in research that directly addresses questions of relevance to patients, their caregivers, and clinicians,” they write. “In the process, PCORI aspires to transform applied medical research by more fully integrating the persons who will use the research into the research process.”

The article by Drs. Krumholz and Selby is available in open access on the Annals web site, as is a “video abstract” in which they discuss their work (the video can be found under the “audio/video” tab on the main article page).

Also available in open access is an accompanying editorial by Michael Pignone, MD, MPH, of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, which says that Drs. Krumholz and Selby outline a “compelling vision” for PCOR” that, “if successful, could potentially improve the health research landscape not only for PCORI but also for other federal and nonfederal research-funding bodies.”

However, Dr. Pignone notes, “several potential obstacles must be overcome for PCORI to be most successful.” These include, he says, the current political environment; the “potential mismatch” between funding opportunities and the type of study designs needed to definitively answer many of the research questions that have been posed; and the challenge of “determining effective and representative means for soliciting the patient's perspective in research.”

The Annals is the second major medical journal in two weeks to take note of PCORI’s work. Last week, Methodology Committee Chair Sherine Gabriel, MD, MSc, and Vice Chair Sharon-Lise Normand, PhD, on behalf of the committee, published an online Perspective piece in the New England Journal of Medicine on the release for public comment of the draft Methodology Report. The public comment period runs through 11:59 pm (ET) on Friday September 14. We’re soliciting feedback on the report through our online public comment survey tool.