Medical research delivers dividends says med research sector

Medical research has a side-effect, buckets of money. A KPMG report for the Association of Australian Medical Research Institutes finds that every dollar invested in medical research from 1990 to 2004 generated $3.90 for the economy. This is “an extraordinary return on investment … far higher than the level needed to secure government funding for just about any other investment in infrastructure, AAMRI chair Tony Cunningham says. Apparently, GDP last financial year was $2.6bn bigger due to that research.

“The analysis of existing returns from medical research considered investment from 1990 to 2004, to allow for the lag between historical research and current outcomes, and the findings from the case studies were extrapolated out to wider medical research,” KPMG states.

Higher education peak groups love the numbers.

The Group of Eight applauded the report and used the opportunity to point out the role of its members, “at the core of almost all Australia’s health and medical advances.”  The Eight added the findings demonstrated the potential of the Medical Research Future Fund and the need for continuing bi-partisan support for its $20bn capital target by 2020.

Science and Technology Australia president Emma Johnston, agreed that medical research is a thoroughly good thing, “the value of life-saving medicines, improved preventative treatments, and new vaccines for harmful diseases had made a profound impact on quality and length of our lives,” she said.  But Professor Johnston went further, predicting “results just as strong” if the government established an equivalent of the Medical Research Future Fund for other-sciences, to “facilitate translation research.”


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