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Previous Events: 

05/20/10: Briefing with NIH Director Francis S. Collins: Leveraging Federal Investment to Speed the Development of Promising Therapies for Patients

The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and FasterCures hosted a briefing that spotlights the nation’s investment in medical research at the National Institutes of Health and examines how these dollars can be leveraged to create new therapies for patients and save lives.

04/07/09: Infusing Life into the Valley of Death

It is widely acknowledged that one of the factors behind the slow momentum in clinical discovery and application is the ever-widening gap – referred to by some as a “valley of death” – in funding and support for the kind of research that moves basic science down the path toward treatments. Years of discovery, the genome and information revolutions, the doubling of our national investment in research through the NIH, and a new sense of urgency for progress in curing diseases have created a changed research environment that demands a system with greater flexibility, efficiency, and accountability.

03/24/10: Science and Progress at the FDA: Realizing the Return on Investment from Biomedical Research

Speakers at a congressional briefing on March 24 said that in order to realize the full return on investment from biomedical research, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) needs to be in a position to take the baton of innovation from the research community and turn it into medical products that are safe, effective, and accessible for patients who need it most. The briefing, Science and Progress at the FDA, was convened by Friends of Cancer Research and FasterCures/The Center for Accelerating Medical Solutions.

03/25/09: Is the HIPAA Privacy Rule Impeding Research

Biomedical researchers use health information from multiple sources including patient registries, medical records, biobanks, and government-supported databases of statistics. Ten years ago, Congress called for a set of standards known as the HIPAA Privacy Rule to protect the privacy of patient medical records held by covered entities, which are often used in such research.

02/23/09: New Mission and Focus for the NIH IRP

The Intramural Research Program (IRP) at the NIH has a distinguished history of discovery, but it currently lacks a clearly defined mission for the 21st Century. In 2008 FasterCures convened a task force chaired by Nobel Laureate Dr. David Baltimore, which called for the IRP to adopt a new mission that is outcomes-focused, is capable of responding quickly to new opportunities and challenges, and that fully utilizes its world-class research hospital and other infrastructure.