Smart Planner: Radically Accelerating R&D to Combat a Biothreat

Conventional R&D processes are ill-suited to biothreats and biothreat preparation because they are intended to support risk-averse decisions for patients and are designed for longer expected development times. The Smart Planner tool is a risk visualization framework developed to help contingency and R&D planners quantify and balance risk, uncertainty, and time. The tool incorporates the following capabilities: (1) visualization of the risks of inaction; (2) identification of critical areas of uncertainty where new information can really make a difference; (3) decision support for (i) development and treatment options and (ii) optimization of tradeoffs given various timescales. The tool facilitates alignment of research planners' acceptance of risks with policy-makers' strategic views of benefits in the context of apparent or overt threats. Policy and ethical implications for application of the tool are also discussed. Drug Dev Res 70: 335-348, 2009. (c) 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc.