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I am seeking USD 24,000 for a four-month follow-up to my Health Policy and Technology article on pharmaceutical authorisation records. The new question is how far a small recorded number of authorisation holders can be translated into a defensible statement about marketed supply. The minimum is USD 12,000 for a three-month, smaller validation study.
The accepted article is a completed output and the starting point for this project. This request does not describe it as an unfinished manuscript. Funding will support new record checks and a separate methods report or follow-up paper, together with prospective publication costs for that new work.
A regulatory archive may list one authorisation holder without establishing that only one company currently supplies the medicine. Different systems record active authorisations, marketed status and ownership changes differently. Researchers and policy analysts need to know which conclusions survive those differences before interpreting a count as evidence of fragile supply.
My training in medicine and innovation economics, and the existing cross-market record work, provide a basis for this follow-up. The intended contribution is a reusable audit protocol with transparent limits, not a forecast of shortages or advice about an individual medicine.
I will select 120 medicine–market records under a documented stratified rule, including low-holder records and comparison cases. Checks will cover ingredient and formulation matching, the holder's legal identity, observation dates and the distinction between authorisation and documented marketed status. At least 30 records will receive an independent second check. The minimum version will attempt 60 records with 15 independent checks.
Every record will distinguish what the archive establishes, what additional public evidence supports and what remains unresolved. Current information will not be used as proof of historical supply. A single authorisation holder will not be recoded as a single manufacturer without evidence. Failed retrieval and unresolvable definitions will remain in the denominator of audit attempts.
I will estimate how the descriptive conclusions change under alternative defensible definitions and report uncertainty within the audited sample. Any claims about active suppliers or shortages will require a separate adequate source. If that evidence cannot be obtained, the funded output will establish the limits of the record-based indicator and show how to avoid overinterpreting it.
Month one fixes the audit rule and a small pilot; months two and three cover record checking and sensitivity analysis; month four produces a new methods report or follow-up working paper, code and a permitted aggregate audit dataset. The minimum version finishes the smaller audit and report in three months. Public source identifiers and retrieval instructions will accompany any material that cannot be redistributed.
This research is already underway and may progress while fundraising continues. The hours and costs below are proposed budgets, not a record of work already performed. Before receiving funds, I will update the completion log and identify any work on this specified stage performed during fundraising. I request that documented research time and direct costs from this stage be eligible for support, including work before disbursement where Manifund explicitly approves it in writing. Earlier completed work is background to this request. I will not charge the same time or expense to another grant. If the stage finishes before funding is available, I will seek approval for retrospective support or revise or close the request; I will not present completed work as still outstanding.
The USD 24,000 budget includes USD 12,000 for 160 hours of my research time at USD 75; USD 3,000 for 120 assistant hours at USD 25; USD 1,500 for 30 independent-review hours at USD 50; USD 1,000 for retrieval and computing; USD 500 for release; and USD 6,000 for prospective submission and publication costs.
The USD 12,000 minimum includes USD 6,000 for 80 hours of my time, USD 1,000 for 40 assistant hours, USD 500 for ten independent-review hours, USD 500 for data and computing, USD 500 for release and USD 3,500 for publication costs.
Publication costs are prospective reserves, not journal quotations or a promise of acceptance. I will check institutional coverage and waivers, document actual charges, and seek approval to reallocate or return unused funds. The public working paper and permitted research materials will be released even if journal review continues beyond the project. Compensation figures are gross project costs.
Public records may not establish marketed status or historical supply reliably. I will report these gaps instead of substituting authorisation counts for supplier counts. A useful result may be a narrower indicator and a clear account of where the available records cannot answer the supply question.
I am Hana Kim, a contract research professor at KAIST's School of Business and Technology Management in South Korea. I hold a PhD in Technology Management, Economics and Policy and a master's degree in medicine from Seoul National University. I will lead the funded work from Korea. Assistants and independent reviewers will be paid from the grant and recruited once support is secured.
The project has separate outputs and costs from my AI-checking, founder-history and scientific-reuse proposals. I will maintain a project time ledger and agree a feasible schedule before accepting overlapping awards. This is a new follow-up proposal, not a grant already received.
I am not currently receiving a separate research grant for the work proposed here. I participate in an institution-administered research institute project supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF). That participation is not presented here as a personal grant award. I will check the allocation of research time and expenses so that any costs covered by the institutional project are not also charged to this grant.
Starting publication: Kim, H. (2026). Source-record correlates of limited observed authorisation-holder diversity in marketed archive records with recorded exclusivity expiry. Health Policy and Technology, 101304. In press. DOI: 10.1016/j.hlpt.2026.101304.
Academic profile: Hana Kim at KAIST BTM