Italian program for independent research on drugs: 10 year follow-up of funded studies in the area of rare diseases.

ABSTRACT:

Background

In 2005 the Italian Medicines Agency (AIFA) started a program on independent research on drugs, with the aim to promote clinical research in areas of limited commercial interest. For 3 years (2005-2007) an area of the program was reserved to studies in the field of rare diseases. There is a concern that public funding of research may be wasted. We investigated the outcome of the program.

Methods

We conducted a cohort study on the projects that were funded by the AIFA in the area of rare diseases. The outcomes were the proportion of published studies, time to publication, impact factor of the publishing journals and relevance for clinical practice. We retrieved published articles through a literature search in peer reviewed biomedical journals indexed by Pubmed. We

SUBMITTER: Traversa G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4828875 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature