Tired of waiting for the National Institutes of Health to approve your grant proposal? If so, you're not alone: First-time applicants now wait an average of nine months to learn if their grant proposals have been approved, and as long as two years if they must revise and resubmit them. But help is on the way, say officials. The NIH is evaluating its peer review system to improve the process and make it more efficient, and is scheduling a pilot program to start in February to shorten the review cycle for new applicants. The pilot, which will be rolled out in about 20 NIH study sections, will shorten many of the steps in the application review process and also let first-time investigators submit revised applications four months sooner. If successful, the process may be expanded to all NIH grant applicants.