Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what progress the Government has made on improving the transparency and affordability of publicly funded medical research.

The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) is funded through the Department to improve the health and wealth of the nation through research. The NIHR invests over £1 billion into health and public health research each year and is committed to “adding value in research” by maximizing the potential impact of research that it funds for patients and the public. This means ensuring that it answers the right questions (including effectiveness and cost effectiveness of interventions), delivers research efficiently and publishes results in full in an accessible and unbiased way.

Full and open access to the knowledge generated by research is of the utmost importance to the NIHR. The NIHR commitment to transparency, the NIHR Journals Library, open access policy, and endorsement of the World Health Organization joint statement on the disclosure of results ensures that ideas and knowledge derived from publicly funded research are made available and accessible for public use.

Departmental business planning, financial forecasting and in-year monitoring processes ensure the affordability of NIHR funded research.