A Quiet Turn of the Revolving Door - Director of NIMH to Go Directly to Google Life Sciences

Amidst a lot of health care news, the job plans of Dr Thomas Insel, currently the director of the National Institute of Mental Health (part of the US National Institute of Health) made a very small splash.  The most comprehensive account was in the New York Times.Dr. Thomas R. Insel, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health, announced on Tuesday that he planned to step down in November, ending his 13-year tenure at the helm of the world’s leading funder of behavioral-health research to join Google Life Sciences, which seeks to develop technologies for early detection and treatment of health problems.As noted in the NYT article, Dr Insel had great influence over the direction of mental health research and policy,Dr. Insel took over the N.I.M.H. in 2002 and steered funding toward the most severe mental disorders, like schizophrenia, and into basic biological studies, at the expense of psychosocial research, like new talk therapies. His critics — and there were plenty — often noted that biological psychiatry had contributed nothing useful yet to diagnosis or treatment, and that Dr. Insel’s commitment to basic science was a costly bet, with uncertain payoffs.A Modern Healthcare article documented Dr Insel's specific organizational roles beyond his directorship that could have influenced research and policy,Insel chaired the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, which is a federal advisory committee that coordinates autism research and services and...
Source: Health Care Renewal - Category: Health Management Tags: NIH NIMH revolving doors Thomas Insel Source Type: blogs