Questions
The questions that get asked in the room.
These are the questions we are actually asked, by the people who ask them. Answering them here means the first meeting can start somewhere more useful than the beginning.
For governments and health systems
What a health ministry asks first.
- What does NGB want from a national health system?
- Access to the problem, not to the population. We ask for the health priorities you have already set and the institutions willing to work on them. We do not ask for exclusive access to patients, sites or data, and we do not ask for a commercial position.
- Who owns the intellectual property?
- The institution that produced it. NGB takes no equity, royalty or licensing interest as a condition of a grant. A discovery made by a domestic institution belongs to that institution.
- Where does the data go?
- It stays. Health data remains subject to your law and your institution’s governance. We do not require transfer of patient-level data abroad, and analysis can be conducted where the data is held.
- Who leads the science?
- Investigators at your own institutions. We do not require a lead role as a condition of support. Full participation in a multicentre protocol means a role in study design and named authorship, not only enrolment.
- What does NGB get out of it?
- Its mission advanced. We are a nonprofit corporation with no shareholders. There is no mechanism by which value taken from a national program could reach a private owner, because there is no private owner.
- What happens at the end?
- We leave. The measure of success is that the capability continues without us: investigators trained, systems aligned to standards that international regulators accept, and studies your institutions can run on their own.
- Can we see your governing documents?
- Yes. The safeguards, board composition and committee structure are published on this site. The conflict of interest policy and the investment policy statement are available on request.
- How does a conversation start?
- With the health priorities you have already set, not with a proposal from us about ours.
For research institutions and investigators
What an investigator wants to know.
- What standard do you apply?
- A threshold stated for each stage before we see the work: a plausible mechanism and a prediction that could fail; replication by a laboratory with no stake in the result; an endpoint registered in advance; and evidence that an effect survives outside the conditions that produced it.
- Who decides?
- An independent scientific and ethics review decides whether the science is credible. A separate committee decides terms. Nothing reaches financial terms that has not already cleared scientific review, and the financial committee does not reopen the science.
- What happens to a negative result?
- It is reported. An endpoint registered in advance is reported whether or not it moved. A study that reports a different outcome than the one it registered has not demonstrated what it appears to demonstrate.
- Does supporting my work give NGB a claim over it?
- No. Grants are non-dilutive and we take no ownership. Where a commitment is structured as investment rather than a grant, any proceeds return to the Institute and are reinvested in the mission.
- Can I say NGB endorses my work?
- No. Support is a funding and scientific-review decision, not a certification. No organization may describe itself as approved, validated or endorsed by NGB.
For founders and early-stage companies
What a founder needs answered.
- Do you take equity?
- Not in a grant. Grants are non-dilutive and carry no ownership, no royalty and no repayment right. Where capital rather than a grant is the right instrument, terms are reviewed by a separate committee and any proceeds return to the Institute.
- What are you actually looking for?
- Early-stage science that could change human health, and a team that can say what would count as failure. We would rather back a clear hypothesis that might be wrong than a confident claim that cannot be tested.
- What happens if you decline?
- You receive a documented decision with reasons. We think a fast, reasoned no is worth more to a founder than a slow silence.
- Who sees my submission?
- The scientific and ethics review, under confidentiality. Anyone with a financial or personal connection to your organization discloses it, leaves the discussion and does not vote.
- How do I start?
- Write and register interest. We reply once the review committees are seated, and submissions open against published standards rather than through a private process.
Anything else
Ask us the harder one.
If the question you need answered is not here, it is probably the one worth asking. Write to the Institute and we will answer it directly, in writing, and add it to this page if others are likely to ask it too.