US National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded biomedical research generates a respectable return on investment, according to the recent report 'Patents as proxies revisited: NIH innovation 2000 to 2013', released in March 2015 by the Battelle Memorial Institute. NIH grants yielded, on average, nearly $106 million in downstream R&D for each $100 million invested. Those downstream connections refer to private and public research organizations where NIH discoveries are further leveraged, leading to follow-on R&D spending equal to the original federal investment—supporting high-skilled, high-wage R&D jobs beyond the original grant period, the report notes. Its analysis is based on some 20,441 NIH-related patents issued during that 14-year period, greatly expanding a patent-based analysis from last year indicating that NIH-supported research generates transformational results with the potential for economic impact (Nat. Biotechnol. 32, 536–538, 2014). Of those NIH-related patents, drugs and related compositions account for one-third; advances in biochemistry and organic chemistry account for 44%, and a variety of “niche areas” of innovation with “important ongoing impacts” round out the remainder. After backing out costs for other mandated activities, NIH averaged 32 patents per $100 million in innovation-related activity, a figure that “compares favorably with the private sector,” the report notes. Battelle, a private nonprofit applied science and technology development company in Columbus, Ohio, prepared the expanded report for the Washington, DC–based Academy of Radiology Research, which supported the earlier analysis.