On 3 April, Qatar unveiled its first National Health Strategy (NHS), which covers the next five years and includes a plan to launch a new national governance body to better manage resources and projects across the various biomedical centers in the small Persian Gulf state. The newly proposed Qatar Medical Research Council (QMRC) will be based in Doha and will be responsible for coordinating research efforts between institutions and communicating the scientific outcomes to policymakers.

Currently, most of the scientific work taking place in Qatar is in basic biomedical research, and in 2006 the country committed to raising science funding to 2.8% of its gross domestic product. “Given the generous resources and the unwavering strive to excellence, it is worthwhile considering how to enhance the current elements involved in biomedical science and health research in Qatar,” says Momtaz Wassef, a former director of Qatar's Department of Biomedical Research at the Supreme Council of Health who advised on the new NHS plan.

The fast growth in Qatar's investment in science has led to the establishment of several large-scale research centers, such as the healthcare facilities run by the Hamad Medical Corporation and a branch of the New York–based Weill Cornell Medical College. There is hardly any coordination among such sites, however, which the NHS suggests could be leading to duplication of efforts and wasted resources.

“We propose QMRC as a model to maximize the impact of investment in biomedical and health research,” explains Wassef, who is now an ad hoc advisor at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).

He adds, though, that the new system should “stay respectful of individual institutions' ethos.”

The current funding bodies “lacked strategic oversight and did not obviously connect to the needs of the Supreme Health Council,” says David Kerr, professor of cancer medicine at University of Oxford in the UK and a past member of the executive committee for Qatar's 2011–2016 NHS.

“Diabetes is an obvious area of study that should be addressed as one of the priority programs instigated by the new council,” he adds.

Kerr notes that the new QMRC is not designed to replace current funding schemes that focus on curiosity-driven, basic research. “This would be complementary to existing funding streams and would not detract from any current investment in more basic science,” he says.