A digital platform for structured research priority-setting
Ideometrics digitises the CHNRI (Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative) method — a peer-reviewed framework for systematically generating, evaluating, and ranking candidate research questions. It is not a general-purpose ideation or AI tool: it is purpose-built to run the structured CHNRI workflow online, at scale, and across languages.
The result is a transparent, reproducible priority list that funders, policymakers, and research communities can trust — one that cannot be distorted by seniority, groupthink, or the loudest voice in the room.
A peer-reviewed standard for research prioritisation
The CHNRI method was developed in the early 2000s by Professor Igor Rudan and colleagues at the University of Edinburgh, initially in close collaboration with WHO and UNICEF to define global child health research agendas. It replaced informal consensus — dominated by the most senior or most vocal figures present — with a democratic, independently scored process.
The core insight is simple: instead of negotiating in a room, each expert evaluates every candidate question independently, against a shared set of criteria. Scores are averaged across the full panel. No group negotiation takes place. No seniority weighting is applied. The resulting ranking is fully auditable.
The method has been applied by WHO, UNICEF, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust across global health, nutrition, infectious disease, mental health, and reproductive health research agendas. It is domain-agnostic and can be configured for any field of research or policy investment.
Key publications: Bulletin of the World Health Organization (2008) · Croatian Medical Journal (2010) · Journal of Global Health (2012–)Five structured phases
Each priority-setting exercise on Ideometrics moves through five phases:
Setup
Exercise managers define the research scope, configure the scoring criteria (drawn from the 23 global CHNRI criteria), set question submission guidance, create participant and manager roles, and optionally design a pre-exercise survey to collect participant demographics.
Question submission
Participants submit candidate research questions — up to five per person — with optional context and category tags. Questions can be submitted in any supported language. Both registered users and anonymous participants can contribute.
Question approval
Managers review, deduplicate, and approve submitted questions. Only approved questions proceed to scoring. The review stage ensures clarity and removes duplicates before the scoring panel sees them.
Independent expert scoring
Each approved question is scored against the exercise's selected criteria by every member of the scoring panel — independently, with no visibility of others' scores. There is no group discussion and no seniority weighting. Scores are recorded incrementally and averaged across the full panel.
Results and analysis
Questions are ranked by composite priority score — the mean across all criteria. The results view shows per-criterion means with standard errors, scoring consistency rates, and average scorer time per question. All data is exportable. Results are fully auditable: managers can see every scorer's individual responses.
23 configurable CHNRI criteria
The CHNRI method evaluates each research question against a set of criteria that capture both scientific merit and practical value. Ideometrics ships with the 23 global CHNRI criteria — including answerability, equity, impact on burden of disease, deliverability, effectiveness, feasibility, ethical acceptability, sustainability, and fundability — and allows exercise managers to select the subset most relevant to their context.
Criteria can be scored on binary (Yes/No) or graduated scales (Yes / Probably / Probably Not / No). The composite priority score for each question is the mean of its per-criterion scores, averaged across all panel members who completed that question.
Built for research teams and funders
Ideometrics is designed for organisations that need to set a defensible research agenda — and need to show their working. Typical users include:
- Academic research consortia running multi-stakeholder priority-setting exercises
- Global health agencies (WHO, UNICEF, regional health bodies) defining investment priorities
- Research funders scoping calls for proposals across a defined problem space
- Government health departments engaging expert panels to rank policy-relevant questions
- Disease-specific charities and foundations setting programmatic research agendas
The platform supports multiple languages, role-based access (participant, manager, owner), and exercises of any scale — from small academic working groups to large international panels spanning dozens of countries.