Table 3.

Comparative analysis according to the criteria of Accountability for Reasonableness (AR) between different health research prioritization processes in Panama, 2006 to 2012

	Decision makers		Criteria
Plan	Committee	Institution (n)	Relevance	Publicity	Review	Reinforcement
Priority-setting I:	Ad Hoc of 6 researchers	ICGES (5) HN (1)	Present	Not present	Follow-up review, present	Review was not incorporated
PENCYT 2006–2010
Priority-setting II:	Pluralist participation of 65 actors from the public and private sector, government, academia and ST&I management	MINSA (25), ICGES (13), UP (7), HST (5), COHRED (1),	Present	Not present	Not present	Partially incorporated into PENCYT 2010–2014
Inter-sectoral and inter-institutional workshop on policies and priorities in health research
		SENACYT (1), CSS (1), Comptroller (2),
		ANAM (1), Private (1), INDICASAT (1),
		HN (2), MIDA (4), NGO (1)
Priority –setting III:	Ad Hoc committee of 13 actors and 3 collaborators	MINSA (4), ICGES (2), CSS (2),	Present	Not present	Present	Not present
PENCYT 2010-2014		UP (2), NGO (1)
		STRI (1), HN (1)
		UP (1), INDICASAT (1), Government (1)

ANAM, Autoridad Nacional del Ambiente (National Environmental Authority); COHRED, Council on Health Research for Development; CSS, Caja del Seguro Social; HN, Hospital del Niño (Children’s Hospital); HST, Hospital Santo Tomás; ICGES, Gorgas Commemorative Institute of Health Studies; INDICASAT, Institute for Scientific Research and Technology Services; MIDA, Ministerio de Desarrollo Agropecuario (Ministry of Agricultural Development); MINSA, Health Ministry; NGO, Non-governmental organization; PENCYT, National Strategic Plan for Science, Technology, and Innovation; SENACYT, National Secretariat for Science, Technology and Innovation; STRI, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute; UP, Universidad de Panamá.

Source: Elaborated from official documents available from SENACYT’s webpage [17,33,34].