Statement of the National Institute of Medical Sciences Research Development of Iran (NIMAD)
With regard to the publication of some materials and doubts about the performance of the National Institute for the Development of Medical Sciences of Iran (NIMAD), especially in the area of resource allocation, while welcoming the opportunity created to clarify the management of this institute and to defend the valuable activities of the outstanding researchers. And in order to enlighten the public opinion, especially to solve the concerns created for the respected academic community, the following points are mentioned:
The National Institute of Medical Sciences Research Development of Iran (NIMAD) was approved by the Council for the Development of Medical Sciences Universities on June 19, 2014, in response to the national necessity of setting up an independent institution supporting national and extra-university researches in the field of medical and health sciences. In fact, this institute is the relaunch of the National Research Center for Medical Sciences (NRCMS), which started its activity in 1378 by supporting strategic and national plans in various fields of health and treatment in the country, but continued with the decision of the Supreme Administrative Council regarding structural reform. The Ministry of Health was merged into the Ministry of Health Research and Technology Deputy.
Taking advantage of the experiences of government institutions that support health research in developed countries, this institute has tried to scientifically evaluate research proposals in the field of medical and health sciences based on standard and international research management systems and support the best of them. In this regard, the management of conflict of interest is one of the serious concerns of the institute (even though there has not been much history of paying attention to this important issue at the national level in the country) and for this purpose, 4 basic measures have been taken.
The average percentage of project acceptance in this institute is about 16% (527 approved projects out of 3285 projects received), but this rate varies from less than 10% in the case of the main university researchers such as Birjand to 100% in the case of Jahrom University of Medical Sciences. Therefore, comparing the number of approved projects based on the academic affiliation of the main researcher without taking into account its ratio to the total number of projects submitted by the researchers of that university is a gross analytical error. For example, during 8 institute calls, 119 out of 515 designs sent by researchers of Tehran University of Medical Sciences (1.23% acceptance rate), 3 out of 9 designs sent by Zahedan University of Medical Sciences researchers (3.33% acceptance rate) and 3 out of 5 submitted designs have been accepted by researchers of Lorestan University of Medical Sciences (60% acceptance rate).
Although the main goal of this institution, according to its organizational position, which operates under the Ministry of Health, Treatment and Medical Education, is to support applicable research projects in universities of medical sciences, but due to the necessity of developing interdisciplinary areas related to health, support Research projects that can be implemented in non-medical sciences universities – for example, the projects of researchers working in prestigious universities such as Sharif University and Tehran University – have also been prioritized for support if at least one faculty member from medical sciences universities cooperates. However, due to the limited financial resources of the institute, this support is limited to a maximum of 20% of the financial resources of each call, and so far, out of 764 projects received from non-medical sciences universities, only 34 projects from the researchers of these universities have been accepted (acceptance percentage equal to 4.5 percentage). However, it seems that one of the important priorities of every research sponsoring institution in today’s world is to pay special attention to interdisciplinary studies in order to synergize the fields of science and at the same time create new capacities for interdisciplinary cooperation and production of science and technology. Therefore, it seems that allocating funds to such activities is considered a strong point of Nimad’s activity.
Continuation of the statement
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This post is written by Shamsizadeh