Reviewer Mindset: Significance
We believe that part of the Blue Haven Grant Consultants (BHGC) advantage is our extensive experience working with National Institute of Health (NIH) reviewers. The Reviewer Mindset series of posts focus on specific parts of an SBIR/STTR application and how we at BHGC approach those sections to create compelling grant applications that are more likely to receive funding.
We’re starting this series with a focus on Significance. This important section of an SBIR/STTR grant application is a pitfall that we have previously written about, but this time we’ll be going into more detail on how to convey this section to a reviewer. When you work with us, we will use our extensive Significance-Innovation Analysis™ process to provide even more refinement and potency to your SBIR/STTR grant application. For now, let’s take a big picture look at what Significance is all about!
Defining Significance
When you search for the NIH’s definition of Significance as a SBIR/STTR criterion, you might have found yourself somewhat overwhelmed by the sheer number of questions used to define the concept:
Does the project address an important problem or a critical barrier to progress in the field? If the aims of the project are achieved, how will scientific knowledge, technical capability, and/or clinical practice be improved? How will successful completion of the aims change the concepts, methods, technologies, treatments, services, or preventative interventions that drive this field? Does the proposed project have commercial potential to lead to a marketable product, process or service? (In the case of Phase II, Fast - Track, and Phase II Competing Renewals, does the Commercialization Plan demonstrate a high probability of commercialization?)
It is also likely that your default answer to each of these questions is a resounding yes! As an innovator, you have intimate knowledge of your idea and the problems you are trying to solve with your innovations. Of course you’ll be making advances that not only improve medical outcomes, but also advances knowledge and is commercially viable.
From an NIH reviewer’s perspective, however, they need to be able to identify which of the many grant applications they receive has the greatest likelihood of resulting in the biggest impact and is worth the allocation of grant funds to support. Therefore, we need to tuck away our own enthusiasm for our projects and instead adopt the mindset of a skeptic about our own project so that we can provide the most compelling grant application that conveys our understanding of the problem space and helps a reviewer to readily evaluate the potential impact our project can make in that space.
One way we can do that is to help a reviewer understand a few factors that drive our understanding of Significance.
Significance Factors
Mortality: People afflicted by a disease or condition have a reduction in life expectancy.
Morbidity: People afflicted by a disease or condition suffer from complications or reductions in quality of life as a result of current treatment methods and treatment programs.
Incidence and Prevalence: The number of people afflicted by a disease or condition is rising in new cases (incidence) and/or is common in the general population (prevalence). It is worth noting that diseases or conditions with low incidence and prevalence are also considered significant because they are less likely to be receiving research and treatment attention.
Access and Equity: People afflicted by a disease or condition have limited access to treatments or treatment options for a variety of reasons. Identifying demographic disparities in access or outcome are particularly compelling and ripe for innovative solutions.
Quality of Life: People afflicted by a disease or condition experienced reduced quality of life due to pain, reduced mobility, and/or profound disruption of routine and commonplace lifestyle activities.
Cost: Current treatments are costly to develop, administer, or deliver to people.
Demonstrating Significance
Focusing on the above factors alone, however, is not sufficient to demonstrate Significance to an NIH reviewer. A strong Significance section of a grant application will also focus on problem specificity and the research consensus around a problem.
Specificity
It is invaluable to identify small and specific problem areas in your Significance section. Although it is important to convey that this problem is situated in a larger problem space context, your NIH reviewer is reading for a highly specified and niche problem that your project is seeking to address. This level of specificity signals that your project has a high degree of focus that is more likely to result in project success.
When you work with BHGC, we will help you refine and communicate your focus as part of our extensive Significance-Innovation Analysis™ process. Our experience has been that nearly all projects benefit from our process of specificity refinement as it is not intuitive to those who are creating innovations to think about their problem space the same way an NIH review does.
Research Consensus
NIH reviewers are also reading for scientific research consensus around the specific problem that you are identifying. In order to demonstrate this, it is important to identify a convergence of opinions and evidence within the relevant scientific community regarding a particular hypothesis, theory, or phenomenon. It signifies that a significant majority of experts in a given field, after rigorous examination and evaluation, share a collective agreement or understanding. This consensus is typically built upon a foundation of empirical data, experimental results, and peer-reviewed studies that have withstood scrutiny and validation by the scientific community.
Identifying and communicating the pertinent research consensus defining your problem space can be challenging. BHGC’s Significance-Innovation Analysis™ process also helps pinpoint the most impactful, compelling, and addressable aspects of your problem space so that you are able to focus your research consensus writing to fit within the confines of SBIR/STTR grant application page limits. This can be a daunting task, but as a BHGC client, you will have our guidance and grant writing expertise throughout the entire grant application process.
The Significance section of an SBIR/STTR application is not the only section that requires an adept approach to ensure grant application success, but the BHGC approach emphasizes significance as the keystone around which a potent, compelling, and fundable grant application is built around.
We certainly hope this post helps you on your SBIR/STTR grant application writing journey. If you feel your project would benefit from our Significance-Innovation Analysis™ driven approach, we would be happy to work with you. With our innovative “BHGC Pay Upon Award”™ pricing model and free consultation, we think you’ll like the BHGC advantage.