Chapter 1: Introduction
Structure of the report Our study sets out to: • review the literature and identify key issues for our study (Chapter Two) • estimate time series for annual expenditures on medical research relating to cardiovascular disease from public and charitable sources, and present time series data on private sector research in the same area, both for comparison and to facilitate our calculations of GDP effects (Chapter Three) • estimate what proportion of those gains should be attributed to UK research (Chapter Four) • estimate the time lag between research expenditure and its clinical application (Chapter Four) • estimate a time series for the annual value of health gains to patients in the UK from the most important interventions in CVD (Chapter Five) • estimate the costs of delivering the health care that produced those gains (Chapter Five) • estimate the effects on national income of the public/ charitable research (Chapter Six) • using data from earlier chapters estimate the return on investment in medical research in terms of the net value of health benefits and combine the estimates of health and GDP returns (Chapter Seven) • test the methods used above in the context of mental health research (Chapter Eight) • identify the key limitations in this approach and propose an agenda for future research (Chapter Nine). Each step involves making estimates based on imperfect data. We have aimed to be explicit about these assumptions and the data weaknesses (in broad terms within the chapters themselves and in more detail in the supporting annexes). We have also aimed to err on the conservative side – avoiding underestimating the research investment or overstating the returns. We present ‘best’ estimates within a range where we feel able to do so. Where we simply have a range, and no other basis to judge, we present the ‘central’ estimate and the range.
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Medical Research: What’s it worth? Estimating the economic benefits from medical research in the UK