Health Research Budget Information: FOI release
Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.
FOI reference: FOI/18/00527
Date received: 16 February 2018
Date responded: 16 March 2018
Information requested
Health Research Budget Information, when and who agrees budget, questions on health research units reviews questions on stratified medicine. 18 questions in total.
1. All the reports give dates like 2016-2017. When is your year end?
2. In which month are your budgets finalised for the following year?
3. Could you send me your budget please for the 2017-2018 year in the format of your Chief Scientist Office Outturn Summary 2016-17. And next year if it is available.
4. Who is the most senior person to sign off this budget?
5. I understand the Strat Med funding has come to an end. How are you reallocating the £3m spent in the last financial year (2016-2017).
6. How regularly do you review funding of you research units – Hearing, HERU, HSRU etc. Please can you send me the last review paper for each.
7. Am I right in thinking that your funding of Strat Med (2016-2017, £3m and £1m the previous year) has finished and you will not be making further payments?
On Strat Med:
A. Please could you send me the original proposal for the Strat Med investment.
B. Did they approach you or did you approach them?
C. How long did this application take from start to finish?
D. I am interested to know what the competitive or collaborative landscape is like around the world for stratified medicine.
E. Are you in Scotland world leaders?
F. What in?
G. Or part of a wider group competing or collaborating with each other?
H. Can you estimate how much global funding goes into stratified medicine and what part of the total are you?
I. If there was a league table who are the world leaders, how much are they spending each year and where would you sit on a league table?
J. What is your Unique Selling Point?
K. Was this information or something similar provided to the CSO prior to their decision to fund you?
Response
Given the scope of the request we have broken down the response to address the individual question asked. We hope this will aid in the communication of our response.
Your request:
You asked for: "1. All the reports give dates like 2016-2017. When is your year end?"
The answer to your question is that the dates refer to financial years starting in April and ending in March.
Your request:
You asked for: "2. In which month are your budgets finalised for the following year?"
The answer to your question is that for 2018-19, the draft budget was presented to the Scottish Parliament in December 2017. It was approved by the Scottish Parliament in February 2018.
Your request:
You asked for: "3. Could you send me your budget please for the 2017-2018 year in the format of your Chief Scientist Office Outturn Summary 2016-17. And next year if it is available"
While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have the information in the format you have requested. The reasons why we don't have the information are explained below.
Some of the information however you have requested is available from the Scottish Parliament website:
http://www.parliament.scot/FinancialScrutiny/2018-19_budget__Level_4.xlsx
Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you.
Your request:
You asked for: "4. Who is the most senior person to sign off this budget?"
The answer to your question is that the 2018-19 budget was approved by The Scottish Parliament.
Your request:
You asked for: "5. I understand the Strat Med funding has come to an end. How are you reallocating the £3m spent in the last financial year (2016-2017)"
The answer to your question is the Strat Med programme concluded at the end of the 2016-17 budget cycle and was therefore not considered for funding in 2017-18.
Your request:
You asked for: "6. How regularly do you review funding of you research units – Hearing, HERU, HSRU etc. Please can you send me the last review paper for each."
The answer to your question is the Scottish Government provides core-funding for the Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health Professions Research Unit (NMAHPRU), the Health Economics Research Unit (HERU), and the Health Services Research Unit (HSRU). The Chief Scientist Office (CSO) convenes a review of each of these units about every five years.
NMAHPRU Unit.
The last review of NMAHPRU took place in 2017 and the review report is available online. Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you. A direct web link to the report and the NMAHPRU website is provided below.
NMAHPRU Unit Review Report
NMAHPRU Website
HERU Unit,
The review of the HERU took place in 2017. The final report is not currently available on the unit's website although we understand will be made available there in the near future. We can provide a copy of the report and have supplied this to the address you provided in your response to our clarification request of 15 March. Further information on the unit can be found on its website.
- HERU Website https://www.abdn.ac.uk/heru/
HSRU Report,
The review of HSRU is currently underway and therefore the review report prepared by the unit is not available online. We can provide a copy of the report and have supplied this to the address you provided in your response to our clarification request of 15 March. Further information on the unit can be found on its website.
- HSRU Website https://www.abdn.ac.uk/hsru/
The Scottish Government also makes contributions to the Medical Research Council (MRC) to the core funding of the MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, the Scottish Collaboration for Public Health Research and Policy, and the Institute for Hearing Research. For these units however it is the MRC that leads and organises the quinquennial reviews, not CSO.
MRC contact details are as follows:
Freedom of Information Officer Medical Research Council Corporate Affairs Group 2nd Floor, David Phillips Building Polaris House Swindon SN2 1ET Email: foi@headoffice.mrc.ac.uk
Your request:
You asked for: "7. Am I right in thinking that your funding of Strat Med (2016-2017, £3m and £1m the previous year) has finished and you will not be making further payments?"
The answer to your question is that there are no current intentions to make additional funding awards to Strat Med (Precision Medicine Ecosystem).
Your request:
You asked for:
A. Please could you send me the original proposal for the Strat Med investment.
B. Did they approach you or did you approach them?
C. How long did this application take from start to finish?
D. I am interested to know what the competitive or collaborative landscape is like around the world for stratified medicine.
E. Are you in Scotland world leaders?
F. What in?
G. Or part of a wider group competing or collaborating with each other?
H. Can you estimate how much global funding goes into stratified medicine and what part of the total are you?
I. If there was a league table who are the world leaders, how much are they spending each year and where would you sit on a league table?
J. What is your Unique Selling Point?
K. Was this information or something similar provided to the CSO prior to their decision to fund you?
While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some off the information you have requested. The reasons why we don't have the information are explained below.
In responding to these questions we have provided copies of the Precision Medicine Ecosystem proposals received of October 2015 and November 2015 and can confirm that a formal award was made in January 2016.
Reasons for not providing information
3. Could you send me your budget please for the 2017-2018 year in the format of your Chief Scientist Office Outturn Summary 2016-17. And next year if it is available
The Scottish Government does not have the information.
The Scottish Government does not have the information in the format you have asked for because the information published on the CSO website referred is compiled from finalised year end management information. The website will be updated in the future when this information is available.
D. I am interested to know what the competitive or collaborative landscape is like around the world for stratified medicine.
E. Are you in Scotland world leaders?
F. What in?
G. Or part of a wider group competing or collaborating with each other?
H. Can you estimate how much global funding goes into stratified medicine and what part of the total are you?
I. If there was a league table who are the world leaders, how much are they spending each year and where would you sit on a league table?
J. What is your Unique Selling Point?
K. Was this information or something similar provided to the CSO prior to their decision to fund you?
These questions would appear to be targeted towards an organisation involved in Stratified Medicine rather that the Scottish Government. This is illustrated by question K which primarily seeks to know if the information provided in points D though J where provided to the Scottish Government prior to the Scottish Governments decision to provide funding to someone.
The information provided in our response and that publically available on the Stratified Medicine Scotland website -
may be sufficient however we would welcome you to review these questions in the context of the Scottish Government and provide clarification to aid us to determine the specific information being sought.
D. I am interested to know what the competitive or collaborative landscape is like around the world for stratified medicine.
I. If there was a league table who are the world leaders, how much are they spending each year and where would you sit on a league table?
These questions do not appear to be valid Freedom of Information requests however we would welcome you to review these questions in the context of the Scottish Government and provide clarification to aid us to determine the specific information being sought.
About FOI
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Contact
Please quote the FOI reference
Central Enquiry Unit
Email: ceu@gov.scot
Phone: 0300 244 4000
The Scottish Government
St Andrew's House
Regent Road
Edinburgh
EH1 3DG
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