Standardise funding of research overheads, Canberra told

Canberra has been urged to adopt a “consistent approach” in covering the indirect costs of medical research, under a strategy which would also align the administration of the two main funders.

A new decadal strategy for Australian health and medical research recommends systemic funding to pay for overheads like laboratories, libraries, power and technicians, which are estimated to cost institutions 63 cents for every dollar they receive in medical research grants.

Strategy author Rosemary Huxtable said the government should use a consistent method to support indirect costs across the two major federal funding providers, the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF). This should start with an “initial uplift” for MRFF-funded grants, she said.

The government has partly accepted the recommendation. Health minister Mark Butler announced an extra A$128 million (A$68 million) over four years to cover MRIs’ “admin costs” associated with MRFF grants.

This will address an “imbalance” in funding for research overheads, Butler said. MRIs are not eligible for the Research Support Programme, which helps cover universities’ indirect research costs, and while the NHMRC contributes to their infrastructure costs, they get “effectively nothing” for MRFF-related overheads.

The Association of Australian Medical Research Institutes (AAMRI) said the government’s commitment to “begin” supporting indirect costs marked a “significant milestone” in addressing one of the sector’s “most persistent challenges”. But Mark Cassidy, deputy vice-chancellor for research at the University of Melbourne, said “more explicit recognition of indirect costs across the full research pipeline” was needed.

The extra A$128 million comes from a A$509 million boost in MRFF allocations, announced through the federal budget. The government says it will increase annual MRFF disbursements from A$650 million to the A$1 billion the fund could accommodate without eroding its A$25 billion capital.

AAMRI has questioned this claim, noting that the additional money – promised over four years – will raise annual allocations to A$745 million by 2029-30. A “substantial increase” will still be needed to achieve the government’s A$1 billion target, AAMRI president Jason Kovacic said.

“Medical research institutes are dealing with sustainability pressures today, not five years from now,” he said. “Support delayed may simply come too late.”

The extra allocations from the MRFF will also be directed towards cancer research and initiatives including a genomic dataset of 150,000 Australian adults, a boost to the NHMRC’s “operating resources” – including a feasibility study into a “research grant hub” to simplify and streamline government grants – and a “one-stop shop” for ethics approval in multijurisdictional clinical trials.

The money will also bankroll competitive grants “to bridge the gap between promising research and the delivery of new medical treatments and innovations”, starting with projects on epilepsy and diabetes, Butler said.

Huxtable’s strategy also proposes “a single executive agency” to manage grants from the NHMRC and MRFF. This would bring both funding sources under “coordinated but separate governance”, preserving their “distinct strengths and purposes” while “addressing duplication and gaps” and delivering “greater efficiency through streamlined administrative management”.

It would allow for consistency in how the two funders “assess researcher track records” and “report and assess project milestones”, the strategy says. It would also “enable stronger policy alignment” in policy areas including the “handling of direct and indirect costs”.

Butler told a Flinders University gathering that a planned “governance group” would advise the government on the strategy’s implementation. “There is widespread agreement across the sector, and certainly with me, on the need for more collaboration between the two big funding sources,” he said.

“They’re already working more closely together with joint committees on a number of issues.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com