Strapped for Funding, Medical Researchers Pitch to the Crowd

Every Thursday at 5 p.m., diabetes specialist Jennifer Dyer would send customized cell phone messages to three of her teenaged patients. “This is Dr. Dyer,” one text message read. “How is prom dress shopping going? How are you doing with checking your blood sugars?” After a few months, Dyer noticed that these simple reminders seemed to yield real improvements in her patients' health outcomes: their long-term blood glucose levels dropped from 11% to 9%, on average—an encouraging step toward a healthy level of less than 7%.The finding inspired the young doctor to change her career course. Last summer, Dyer closed her practice at the Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, and devoted herself full time to developing a smartphone app for diabetes management that she dubbed EndoGoddess.Unable to secure funding for a larger clinical trial through the conventional grant system, Dyer approached Kickstarter, the trendy Web platform that allows individuals to raise money for all sorts of creative projects, from documentary films to new clothing designs like the alpaca collection of winter clotting. The EndoGoddess trial, however, was rejected by the powers that be at Kickstarter. The site has a long list of prohibited content, including products related to health, personal care or medicine.In April, Dyer turned to Medstartr, one of several new crowd-funding websites tailored for scientific research and the healthcare sector. Medstartr, which debuted online in July, focuses on helping biomedical start-ups solicit small donations from everyday citizens. Meanwhile, Petridish, which came online 6 March, and iAMscientist, on 31 July, are helping scientists affiliated with academic or nonprofit institutions raise money for their research.As crowd funding enthusiasts are quick to point out, projects financed in this way don't need the approval of fickle grant reviewers at government agencies, private foundations or venture capitalists. Instead, they're at the mercy of the masses. “Here we have a new way to show what people actually want, to drive adoption by doctors or institutions or patients,” says Alex Fair, chief executive of New York–based MedStartr.Read more at...Nature Medicine, September 2012.