Cure Pablo, Radman Thomas, Doyle Jaime Mihoko, Atienza Audie A, Fessel Joshua P, Hartshorn Christopher M
National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland.
JAMA Netw Open. 2025 Jan 2;8(1):e2452976. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.52976.
Digital health in biomedical research and its expanding list of potential clinical applications are rapidly evolving. A combination of new digital health technologies (DHTs), novel uses of existing DHTs through artificial intelligence- and machine learning-based algorithms, and improved integration and analysis of data from multiple sources has enabled broader use and delivery of these tools for research and health care purposes. The aim of this study was to assess the growth and overall trajectory of DHT funding through a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-wide grant portfolio analysis.
This study used 21 preselected DHT search terms to identify the funding allocations in DHT research across a 9-year period between fiscal year 2015 and fiscal year 2023. A subset of grants were manually curated to confirm the search terms' accuracy and ascertain the stage of development, focus, and types of tools or approaches. To understand the translation of DHTs from biomedical research to clinical application, common measures, such as digital health publications and clinical trials were included. The DHT portfolio represented 3.2% (US $7 628 967 500) of the overall NIH grants funded from 2015 to 2023. DHT research funding increased during this period from $348 725 600 to $1 533 281 000. DHT research publications and clinical trials using the same search terms increased from 3714 to 14 786 and from 89 to 240, respectively. More DHT research funding was used for research and development purposes (59.3%) than for clinical or regulatory purposes (41.0%) based on manual, second-level data curation.
This study found that investments in DHT research at the NIH has increased over the past 9 years and that this increase has been steady since 2015, including during and even after the COVID-19 pandemic. Increased use of DHTs is expected to continue as these technologies become a more integral part of the biomedical research ecosystem.
生物医学研究中的数字健康及其不断扩大的潜在临床应用清单正在迅速发展。新的数字健康技术（DHT）、通过基于人工智能和机器学习的算法对现有DHT的新用途，以及对来自多个来源的数据进行改进的整合和分析，使得这些工具能够更广泛地用于研究和医疗保健目的。本研究的目的是通过对美国国立卫生研究院（NIH）全范围资助项目组合的分析，评估DHT资金的增长情况和总体发展轨迹。
本研究使用21个预先选定的DHT搜索词，来确定2015财年至2023财年这9年期间DHT研究的资金分配情况。对一部分资助项目进行了人工筛选，以确认搜索词的准确性，并确定开发阶段、重点以及工具或方法的类型。为了了解DHT从生物医学研究到临床应用的转化情况，还纳入了数字健康出版物和临床试验等常见指标。DHT项目组合占2015年至2023年NIH总体资助金额的3.2%（76.289675亿美元）。在此期间，DHT研究资金从3.487256亿美元增加到15.33281亿美元。使用相同搜索词的DHT研究出版物和临床试验分别从3714篇增加到14786篇，从89项增加到240项。根据人工二级数据筛选，用于研发目的的DHT研究资金（59.3%）多于用于临床或监管目的的资金（41.0%）。
本研究发现，过去9年NIH对DHT研究的投资有所增加，自2015年以来这种增长一直稳定，包括在新冠疫情期间乃至之后。随着这些技术成为生物医学研究生态系统中更不可或缺的一部分，预计DHT的使用将继续增加。
