NIH pumps $130M into health and medicine AI research

The NIH is all set to give a major push to the medicine AI community.

As a part of its Bridge to Artificial Intelligence program (Bridge2AI), the NIH fund will invest $130 million over four years to promote the use of AI in biomedical and behavioral research.

The goal is to generate new “flagship” data sets and create best practices for machine learning analysis.

While AI is used in the biomedical and healthcare space, the NIH said that its adoption is not up to mark.“The biomedical research community generates a wealth of data, but most of these data are not suitable for machine learning because they are incomplete,” said the NIH on its website.

The agency wants to change that by generating new biomedical and behavioral data sets that are ethically sourced, trustworthy, well-defined and accessible, it added. The NIH emphasized major goal of the program is to ensure AI and data do not perpetuate inequities.

“Generating high-quality ethically sourced data sets is crucial for enabling the use of next-generation AI technologies that transform how we do research,” NIH director Lawrence Tabak said in a press statement.

Lawrence Tabak

AI-ready data sets have the potential to unravel some of the most pressing challenges in human health — such as uncovering how genetic, behavioral and environmental factors influence a person’s physical condition throughout their life, said the NIH.

Researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, University of California Los Angeles, and the University of Colorado Denver were chosen to lead the NIH Common Fund’s Bridge2AI program.

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