FHRI Fund Programs and Initiatives

A program or initiative is a mechanism through which funding is directed to a specific purpose and contributes to achieving one or more of the priority goals.

Programs and initiatives are approved by the Minister with consideration to the recommendation of the Advisory Council.

The Department of Health is responsible for developing, implementing and managing programs and initiatives, with assistance from expert committees as appropriate. The Advisory Council oversees the programs and initiatives and assures they have been developed and implemented appropriately and align with the priority goals.

Selection processes

For each program or initiative, one of the following selection processes is utilised to determine recipients of funding:

• Selection based on assessment criteria: eligible applications are critically evaluated through an open and competitive process that includes a panel review against defined assessment criteria with this informing the selection of funding recipients.
  
  
• Selection based on measures of excellence: eligible applications receive funding based on an open competitive process that includes a ‘research excellence’ measure, such as the amount of nationally and internationally competitive, peer-reviewed, grant income they have received, the number of PhD students supported, or the number of new projects approved by an appropriate review committee (i.e. scientific review committee or human research ethics committee) to demonstrate recency and relevancy.

Grant review panels

The OMRI is able to establish expert committees to support the Advisory Council, the Minister and the Department of Health, as required. Expert committees are normally time-limited, and each has a clearly defined scope, as well as more general terms of reference related to conflicts of interest and ethical conduct.

Expert committees can include the establishment of grant review panels to assess applications for any given program or initiative.

The ongoing participation of the WA health and medical research and innovation community and of consumers in grant review panels assists the Office of Medical Research and Innovation (OMRI) to ensure competitive grant review processes and decisions on funding are based on impartial and expert advice.

Each time a review process is required, OMRI will draw grant reviewers from a pool of reviewers and subject matter experts. In selecting reviewers, consideration is given to an appropriate spread of expertise, experience, age and gender, to ensure diversity and the best mix of skills on each review panel.

To assist with identifying suitable panel members, nominations are sought from people who are interested in being a reviewer in an application assessment process. To express an interest in joining a grant review panel please visit Future Health Research and Innovation Fund - Get involved