SECTION 5:
EXTENDING THE MODEL TOWARDS CLINICAL AND BASIC BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH
Introduction
For the most part, research to date has applied the Buxton/Hanney approach to examples of applied health services research, particularly evaluation of particular forms of health care. This work has already noted that in the case of more methodologically orientated research, the health service benefit, if any, will typically arise through subsequent use of the methods rather than directly from the methodological research project itself. By implication, the same argument might apply to more basic research in health sciences, where health service (and similar benefits) arise as a result of the incorporation of the results of the basic research into more applied research. Indeed there might be a series of 'feeds' into progressively more applied and service focused research, before health service benefits arise.
This section considers some of these possibilities in the light of previous attempts to analyze the role and value of basic science. It then uses four case studies to begin to see how the existing model, or extensions of it, might be used to analyze the research of clinical investigators and basic scientists. It then draws some tentative conclusions, recognizing that the work here represents no more than a first foray into a very complex field of study.
