Funding is the act of providing financial resources, usually in the form of money, or other values such as effort or time, to finance a need, program, and project, usually by an organization or company.
Bestwick et al. reviewed current funding in Degenerative Cervical Myelopathy research and highlighted future research funding opportunities.
A systematic search of the Web of Science for “cervical AND myelopathy” was conducted. Papers exclusively studying DCM with declared funding and published between January 1, 1995, and March 21, 2020, were considered eligible. Funding sources were classified by country of origin and organization type. A grant search was also conducted using Dimensions.ai (Digital Science Ltd).
A total of 621 papers were included, with 300 unique funding bodies. The top funders were AO Spine (n=87); National Institutes of Health, USA (n=63); and National Natural Science Foundation, China (n=63). Funding sources in the USA (n=242) supported the most DCM research, followed by China (n=209) and Japan (n=116). Funding in the USA was primarily provided by corporate or nonprofit organizations (146/242, 60.3%), while in China, the majority of funding was from institutions (208/209, 99.5%). Dimensions.ai gives an estimate for the total declared grant funding awards for DCM-specific research. Data here showed 180 grants awarded specifically for DCM research, with a total value of US $45.6 million since 1996.
DCM funding appears to be predominantly from the USA, China, and Japan, aligning with areas of high DCM research activity and underpinning the importance of funding for increasing research capacity. The existing funding sources differ from medical research in general, representing opportunities for future investment in DCM 1)