AIFA has been the first medicines agency in Europe to include within its institutional objectives the promotion of public scientific research on strategic pharmaceutical sectors, even in areas of little interest for profit research.

AIFA's independent research program is aimed at all Italian researchers from public and non-profit institutions and is financed by a share of the fund consisting of a contribution equal to 5% of the promotional expenses incurred annually by pharmaceutical companies.

The Agency supports non-profit clinical studies, aimed at:

• comparisons between medicines to demonstrate additional therapeutic value;
• studies on orphan drugs and rare diseases;
• studies on prescriptive appropriateness and aimed at optimizing therapeutic strategies;
• studies on the safety profile of medicines and on information.

Calls for funding of independent research are usually published on an annual basis and are constantly updated, in order to suit to the new needs arising in the health sector at an increasingly accelerated pace.

AIFA intends to share with the National Health Service operators the results of studies already completed (winners of the AIFA 2005-2012 calls), by providing the links to the relevant publications in scientific journals.

Since 2005 studies funded by AIFA with independent research calls have been 288, for a total of 173 publications in international scientific journals with a high impact factor. In most cases, these are interventional studies. The most common areas are orphan drugs and rare diseases, comparative drug studies, new pharmacological strategies, active pharmacovigilance studies and pharmacoepidemiology studies.