NIH Strategic Plan for Data Science

About the Strategic Plan

Storing, managing, standardizing and publishing the vast amounts of data produced by biomedical research is a critical mission for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In support of this effort, NIH released its first Strategic Plan for Data Science in June 2018 that provides a roadmap for modernizing the NIH-funded biomedical data science ecosystem. NIH is actively implementing its strategy and will continue to seek community input during the implementation phase.

Accessible, well-organized, secure, and efficiently operated data resources are critical to modern scientific inquiry. By maximizing the value of data generated through NIH-funded efforts, the pace of biomedical discoveries and medical breakthroughs for better health outcomes can be substantially accelerated. To keep pace with rapid changes in biomedical data science, NIH will work to address the:

  • findability, interconnectivity, and interoperability of NIH-funded biomedical data sets and resources
  • integration of existing data management tools and development of new ones
  • universalization of innovative algorithms and tools created by academic scientists into enterprise-ready resources that meet industry standards of ease of use and efficiency of operation
  • growing costs of data management.

For more information about the NIH Strategic Plan for Data Science, please contact the Office of Data Science Strategy at datascience@nih.gov.

This page last reviewed on March 23, 2023