One of the most pressing issues discussed at the 8th HIBA Academic Congress on Healthcare Information Systems 2013 was “Financing Instruments Applicable to Health and Technology” panel, coordinated by Doctor Adriana Dawidowski, a researcher at the Hospital Italiano of Buenos Aires.
Taking part in the panel were Carolina O’Donnel, a coordinator at the National Health Research Commission at the Ministry of Health; Martín Albarracín, coordinator of technical execution at the Fiduciary Fund for the Promotion of the Software Industry (FONSOFT); Marcelo Martí, a researcher at the Argentine Platform of Bioinformatics; andMarina Marzocca, a member of the Coordinating Body for the Evaluation of Projects for the Fund for Scientific and Technological Research (FONCYT).
“Bioinformatics is taking us from the genome to the phenotype in the digital world,” said Martí after presenting the basic foundations of the Dogma of Molecular Biology.
Furthermore, the researcher at the Argentine Platform for Bioinformatics recalled how information has been digitalized since 1982 and emphasized that the challenge now is to achieve personalized medicine.
“Ramón Carrillo-Arturo Oñativia” Grants
“Multi-focused studies are a strategy for obtaining knowledge about an issue prioritized by the Ministry of Health,” explained O´Donnell, regarding the Ramón Carrillo-Arturo Oñativia Health Science Grants.
Although the coordinator at the National Health Research Commission admitted that it is difficult to get financing, she noted that grants for health research have been awarded to 260 doctors in the country.
“It’s difficult to get financing, but we offer the opportunity. We have a National Record of Health Research,” she said.
Fiduciary Fund for the Promotion of the Software Industry
As Albarracín explained, FONSOFT – which belongs to the National Agency for Scientific Promotion (ANPCyT) at the Ministry of Science, Technology and Productive Innovation (MinCyT) – seeks to bring together different actors from the ICT sector to make them into a driver for innovation through the provision of loans and subsidies.
“The recipients are students, entrepreneurs and businesses,” said the coordinator of technical execution at FONSOFT.
In this regard, he mentioned two lines of financing: the Young Professional Grants for the presentation of projects of technological innovation aimed at encouraging the completion of careers in ICTs and starting businesses, and the FONSOFT Entrepreneurs project, which covers up to 50 per cent of the entire proposal presented.
PID and PIDC Subsidies from FONCYT
To finance partnership projects, the Fund for Scientific and Technological Research provides subsidies to institutions located in the country that work on the generation of new knowledge in science and technology.
Marzocca explained that there are two lines of financing: the Research and Development Projects (PID), to obtain competitive results in the generation and application of new knowledge in Science and Technology, and Clinical Research and Development Projects (PIDC) aimed at encouraging research activities.
