What will it cost to implement the NCI Best Practices?
The NCI is aware of public concerns about the cost associated with implementing the NCI Best Practices. Determining the true cost of initiating and/or maintaining a high-quality resource depends on the size, mission, and scope of each resource. In addition, the expense for most resources is “hidden” in other funding mechanisms. Thus, the first step of determining cost is to identify and analyze “modular” costs that comprise high-quality resources and apply these metrics to particular resources to determine their actual costs. The NCI Office of Biorepositories and Biospecimen Research is currently exploring various economic and cost issues related to biospecimens, including understanding the overall economic value of biospecimen resources and supporting the NCI leadership in efforts to control the costs of biospecimen resources in an era of NIH budget limitations. While acknowledging concerns about cost, the NCI maintains that investigators cannot afford the scientific impact of inadequ
