The 15-person committee that will oversee the spending of US$1.1 billion on 'comparative effectiveness' research was named by the US Department of Health and Human Services on 19 March. Elizabeth Nabel, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, will represent the National Institutes of Health, which is receiving $400 million of the money.

Over the next 18 months, the initiative will support research by federal agencies on the relative strengths and weaknesses of various medical interventions, ideally providing physicians and patients with the information needed to drive cost savings in the world's most expensive health-care system (see Nature 458, 7; 2009). It was funded as part of the $787-billion economic stimulus package signed into law in February.