PCORI offers $120M for research funding

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) will dole out $120 million to fund 34 patient-centered clinical comparative and clinical effectiveness research studies on a range of conditions and patient populations.

The new awards include $58.5 million to fund five clinical studies on radiation therapy for breast cancer, fractures in older adults and treatments for children with bipolar disorder and Crohn's disease.

This is the second round of awards to support these clinical studies which are typically conducted in clinical settings during routine care and aim to produce results applicable to a broad range of patients and care situations.

Each of the five studies will involve national advocacy organizations, major professional societies and associations, payers, or other key patient and stakeholder groups in their research design and implementation.

"We're excited about the important patient-centered questions that these studies aim to answer," said PCORI Executive Director Joe Selby, MD, in a release. "We're also particularly excited about the partnerships that the research teams are forming with key patient groups and other stakeholder organizations. This kind of engagement can lead to greater attention to the outcomes that matter most to patients and those who care for them and foster quicker dissemination and application of study results."

The board also approved 29 other awards, totaling nearly $61.6 million, under broad funding announcements issued in August 2014 under PCORI's five National Priorities for Research. These studies will compare different options for improving outcomes for conditions such as opioid addiction, arthritis, stroke, Parkinson's disease, leukemia, chronic kidney disease and child abuse.

These new awards bring PCORI's funding to a total of $854.6 million for 399 patient-centered outcomes research projects since it began funding research in 2012.