What’s Planted in your Garden?

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It’s Spring, and time to start planting seeds in the garden. At home that means flowers, vegetables and herbs. At work it can only mean one thing – R&D.

R&D is critical for any healthcare organization, and ours is no different. In fact, it is why we exist. Our singular goal is to invest in grants to advance research, education, and patient care.

Research is highly uncertain. Results are often complex making it difficult to measure success of R&D programs and justify the investment.  We support seed grants for seminal research that gets projects into the lab and protects researchers’ time to explore innovative new ideas.

But we don’t do it alone. Thousands of individuals, companies and private practices help tend to our garden.  Because of their support, this year we’re planting $2.7 million of R&D seed grants in our garden on topics ranging from PET imaging to novel contrast agents to comparative effectiveness.

We know that for every $1 we award to investigators, their research careers grow to receive over $30 in subsequent funding from NIH, private foundations, and companies.  This $30:1 return on investment shows the fruits of our garden – developments in MR elastography, handheld devices for bedside diagnosis, targeted treatment of cancer stem cells, techniques for dose reduction, characterization of brain tumors and more.

One of the best parts of my job is when past grant recipients call, or email, or stop by to share the good news with us that their NIH grant was funded, their work is being published, or just to say thank you. We’re creating a workforce of strong researchers for the future.

 What kind of R&D are you planting this spring?