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| By Erin Schumaker, Carmen Paun, Daniel Payne and Ruth Reader | | | | |
National Institutes of Health Director Monica Bertagnolli has pushed back on the idea of consolidating her agency’s institutes and centers, as congressional Republicans want. Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images | House Republicans put NIH Director Monica Bertagnolli in the hot seat Tuesday, pressing her on reform and loss of agency trust during a National Institutes of Health budget hearing. Alabama’s Robert Aderholt, a Republican appropriator who oversees the agency’s funding, expressed disappointment in the agency. Aderholt is shepherding a House reform proposal that suggests consolidating the NIH’s 27 institutes and centers to 15 and imposing five-year term limits on NIH directors.
“Instead of a bold discussion on how to move NIH into the future, we have gotten staunch adherence to the status quo. Covid has shown that the status quo is unacceptable,” Aderholt told Bertagnolli. “For many in the American public, trust in the institution is gone, and once lost, it will take great effort to restore. I would encourage you to put as a top priority rebuilding the confidence in the NIH as a leader in unbiased, nonpartisan objective basic science.
While the House plan is an “opening start” for reform, Aderholt said, change is needed. “The NIH we have today does not reflect the best structure to achieve its mission or the best structure for science. We should not shy away from this reality.”
Bertagnolli pushed back on the idea of consolidating her agency’s institutes and centers this month during the first meeting of the agency’s reestablished Scientific Management Review Board, which is tasked with reviewing the NIH’s structure and research portfolio and making recommendations to the director. “If we were to collapse, we would definitely lose something in terms of our engagement with the public, and I think that’s really critical,” Bertagnolli said.
What’s next: President-elect Donald Trump hasn’t indicated whether he’ll ask Bertagnolli, who’s been in the director role for just a year, to stay on. He’s so far filled other top health administration jobs, including the Health and Human Services secretary and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator, with celebrity loyalists Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dr. Mehmet Oz. Stanford University physician and economist Jay Bhattacharya, who was highly critical of NIH leadership during the pandemic, has emerged as a leading candidate to head up the nearly $50 billion biomedical research agency.
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Azores Islands, Portugal | Erin Schumaker / POLITICO | |
This is where we explore the ideas and innovators shaping health care. People everywhere can watch a pair of nesting eagles starting Thursday, courtesy of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, the Associated Press reports. Share any thoughts, news, tips and feedback with Carmen Paun at cpaun@politico.com, Daniel Payne at dpayne@politico.com, Ruth Reader at rreader@politico.com, or Erin Schumaker at eschumaker@politico.com. Send tips securely through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp.
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An AI algorithm cut the time needed to match eligible patients with suitable clinical trials by nearly half compared with clinicians manually matching, according to a new study. | Brian Kersey/AP | Clinicians could match patients to clinical trials faster using a ChatGPT-like algorithm, a new National Institutes of Health study suggests. The algorithm, called TrialGPT, cut the time needed to match eligible patients with suitable clinical trials by nearly half compared with clinicians manually matching, according to the study published in Nature Communications on Monday. It also explained how patients met the enrollment criteria. How so: Researchers from NIH’s National Library of Medicine and National Cancer Institute developed the algorithm. It processes a patient’s medical and demographic information and finds trials the patient is eligible for using the ClinicalTrials.gov database. It then provides a list of clinical trials, ranked by relevance and eligibility, which clinicians can use to discuss opportunities with their patients, according to the NIH. Why it matters: While the algorithm could streamline patient-trial matching, the researchers say human recruiters should remain involved in the process instead of making it fully automated. What’s next: The research team will assess the algorithm’s performance and fairness in the real world over the next two years.
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Rwanda has garnered praise for its swift response to a deadly virus outbreak. | Sabin Vaccine Institute & Partners | Rwanda's swift response to its Marburg virus outbreak is setting new standards for how developing countries can tackle deadly pathogens. The small African country has earned praise for how well it responded to and contained the outbreak of the fatal Ebola-like virus, which has killed 15 people and infected at least 66. Rwanda started testing an experimental vaccine against the virus a little more than a week after the outbreak was officially declared. How so: The Washington-based Sabin Vaccine Institute, a nonprofit developing the vaccine with funding from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, sent 2,700 doses to Rwanda for testing in health care professionals at risk of getting the virus and miners who could encounter bats harboring Marburg. To deliver the shots to Rwanda within 10 days of the outbreak declaration, multiple work processes that typically occur sequentially had to be performed simultaneously, Amy Finan, Sabin’s CEO, said.
“We had work streams around clinical operations, clinical protocol, legal and business issues that had to be taken care of, as well as epidemiological and then communications, obviously,” she told Carmen. The Rwandan government, Sabin, BARDA and other organizations involved in the vaccine delivery and testing had worked together before, which made cooperation seamless, she added. Why it matters: Sabin’s cooperation with Rwandan authorities offers a blueprint for rapidly delivering and deploying vaccines during an outbreak of a deadly pathogen in a developing country. Health experts see vaccine delivery and use, along with isolating patients and tracing and monitoring their contacts, as crucial for saving lives and containing disease spread. |
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