How Data Governance Empowers Academic Medical Centers to Secure Research Grants

In this article, we explore how data governance can help Academic Medical centers (AMCs) secure research grants.

As of 2023, the following US universities received the largest grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

So, as we can see above, a significant amount of funding is available through these research grants.

In fact, due to the significant amount of money involved, the number of applications for NIH research grants has doubled since 1995. However, the success rate of the grant applications has reduced from 30% to 20%.

Research Project Grants Report by NIG

So, what can AMCs do to increase their chances of securing a research grant?

Well, data governance is the right first step towards this direction.

Increase Funding Success With Data Governance

Data governance helps AMCs to secure research grants by improving the following, crucial success factors.

Enhancing Proposal Quality 

A well-governed data environment enables researchers to develop more compelling and robust research proposals. With access to high-quality data and clear methodologies, proposals can deliver greater impact, backed up by strong evidence and more reliable predictions. Ultimately, this increases the chances of an AMC being funded.

Facilitating Multi-Center Studies

Data governance enables efficient data sharing and collaboration among different medical centers and research institutions. This is particularly important for large-scale, multi-center studies that often receive substantial funding.

When an AMC can demonstrate its ability to manage and integrate data from multiple sources this can give it a significant advantage in grant applications.

Supporting Data-Driven Decision Making

Effective data governance provides a solid foundation for data-driven decision-making. This is crucial for identifying research priorities, designing studies, and allocating resources efficiently.

In the end, grant providers are more likely to support projects that demonstrate a strategic and data-informed approach to research.

When combined, these data governance techniques not only boost the chances of success for grant funding, but enable AMCs and funding institutions to demonstrate a comprehensive, traceable data foundation for the decision-making process.

“Functionally, the impact of well-structured, easily queryable information about clinical events, risks, outcomes, and resource utilization fundamentally transforms a healthcare organization's capacity for quality improvement, research productivity, and best-practice monitoring.”

Source: NCBI

There are many examples of how AMCs have used data governance to help secure funding. Below, we list some of the most significant cases.

Case studies

Mayo Clinic

• Background: Mayo Clinic focused on establishing a centralized data governance model that included clear data standards, data stewardship roles, and data access policies.
• Outcome: The improved data environment enabled researchers to access high-quality datasets more easily, leading to the creation of robust, data-driven research proposals. One notable success was a large-scale study on personalized medicine that received $55 million NIH funding, largely because of the strength of the data used in the proposal.

Cleveland Clinic

• Background: Cleveland Clinic established a data governance framework aimed at improving the accessibility and quality of its clinical data. This included standardizing data definitions, improving data quality, and ensuring data security.
• Outcome: Researchers at Cleveland Clinic were able to leverage this well-governed data environment to craft stronger research proposals. One key success was a project on cardiovascular disease that secured a $14 million-dollar grant.

Note that research grants are not awarded only to AMCs, but also to non-universities. Three non-university institutions that ranked in the overall top 20 were Leidos Biomedical Research ($866,144,063); Massachusetts General Hospital ($675,290,582); and the Research Triangle Institute ($550,923,106).

Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)

• Background: MGH implemented a data governance strategy focused on ensuring that researchers had access to clean, well-organized data sets. The governance framework included the adoption of common data models and robust data management practices.
• Outcome: The ability to use standardized and high-quality data in research proposals significantly improved the chances of securing funding. An example includes MGH’s success in obtaining a $200 million grant for cancer research, which was attributed to the compelling use of data in the research proposal.

Conclusion

AMCs, as well as many non-university healthcare institutions, rely on grant funding to further their critical research.

However, if an AMC is unable to provide a solid research proposal, its chances of winning the research grants are very low.

Data governance enhances the quality of research proposals and subsequent research work. Institutions that have solid data governance in place and better placed to win research project grants.

Getting Started with Data Governance

Data governance begins with centralization. This involves collecting all of your metadata and making it available in a single location, namely a data catalog. The second crucial step is identifying data stewards.

Identifying stewards enables organizations to establish clear data ownership and accountability and kickstarts the process of defining policies for data access and usage.

Data stewards ensure:

• Data is well-cataloged
• Data is clearly structure and follow well-defined standards
• Data sources are known and lineage, where the data comes from and where it goes, is publicized
• Data is up to date and of high-quality
• Data is compliant with the regulatory requirements.

How OvalEdge Enables Data Governance

OvalEdge provides a data governance framework for AMCs. We provide all of the features including data catalog, data quality tools, a business glossary, and access governance features to govern all aspects of data. Furthermore, we make it easy for your organization to establish a network of data stewards to manage standards.

Organizations must set up a data governance committee and charter before establishing data ownership, controls, and policies. OvalEdge enables users to implement these policies through its dedicated data governance platform.  

Data stewards can leverage our data quality module to ensure data accuracy. And, using our data lineage tools, prove the legitimacy of the data by tracing it back to the source. Using OvalEdge, AMCs can create policies out-of-the-box, saving time, money, and resources. We have worked with numerous organizations to develop policies specific to the requirements of AMCs.

Because OvalEdge enables easy adoption of data governance programs, AMCs can quickly move from the first stages in developing a data governance initiative to the point at which policies are enforced and data governance is active. Enforcing data governance through specified control mechanisms requires data crawling, establishing, ownership, workflow alerts, and curation. All of this can be done out-of-the-box in OvalEdge.

OvalEdge can also help data teams to analyze data when preparing grant proposals. With all of the data curated and categorized, it’s very easy to pull the specific data sets required for specific proposals.

Finally, OvalEdge enables users to catalog all of their metadata in a single, centralized space. This eliminates silos and provides data teams with a clear mechanism to manage all system data.