What’s on my mind this month is the need for enhanced federally-funded clinical research. We are currently witnessing an evolution in medical and scientific research at the national level. There are vast increases in biological data from the human genome project. Advanced technologies are being used for molecular discovery. There are developments in more personalized approaches to care. As part of this transformation, we are seeing a growing emphasis and embrace of both clinical and translational research by federal and state funding agencies. One needs to look no further than www.clinicaltrials.gov and the new National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) at NIH as evidence of the scope and magnitude of federally-funded clinical trial research.
