The CSO is the branch of the Israeli Ministry of Health that deals with all medical research issues. Its mission is to promote medical research in Israel by combining three main activities: 1) policy advisory and consultation activities, 2) funding and evaluation of medical research on a competitive, peer review evaluation basis, 3) regulatory responsibilities related to medical research, including operation of the National Committee for Human Medical Research and the National Council for Animal Experimentation.

The “Chief Scientist’s Research fund” covers a broad range of research studies of clinical nature or which are disease and health-related (which investigate the etiology, course and treatment of illness and disease). In 2004, the global budget committed to biomedical research was € 1,065,000, of which about € 100,000 were dedicated to fund research projects dealing with rare diseases.