Background and Objective:
Research Impact Assessment (RIA) is complex to analyze, but there are not internationally validated standards and procedures. The actual challenge is experimenting with RIA approaches and sharing findings with scientific community. Alessandria Local Health Authority and Alessandria Hospital together created DAIRI (Department of Integrative Activities to Research and Innovation) that receive from Italian Piedmont Region mandate to establish the IRCCS for “Environmental Diseases and Mesothelioma” and to monitor regional health research. This work aims to identify a RIA framework to be applied to health research organizations in Piedmont.

Methods:
We pursued the objective in two steps: carrying out a literature review to identify a pool of frameworks suitable for DAIRI reality needs and using a focus group (composed by DAIRI board) to identify the most appropriate one to use.

Results:
Considering that adopting an existing framework requires adapting it to the needs of the research organization, DAIRI focus group decided to select the framework proposed by Banzi et al. in “Conceptual frameworks and empirical approaches used to assess the impact of health research: an overview of reviews” for RIA on research organizations in Alessandria province and to shape it to the reality in which DAIRI operates.

Conclusions:
Since Regional Health Directorate set up a working group with regional health organizations’ research referents, the aim is to share with them both the RIA literature review and the results of first RIA activity carried out by DAIRI in Alessandria Province in order to adapt and apply the framework at the regional level in the future. We aim to be able to disseminate the results of these evaluations to contribute to the growth of RIA process within the scientific community and start a continuous RIA process.