NIH Funding Analysis
The National Institute of Health (NIH) is an organization under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that provides direct federal research grants for the life sciences market. Knowing where this funding is going and how it’s being spent is critical for research analytics and lead generation in the academic market.
The NIH maintains the RePORTER database which lists organizations and institutions funded, the projects involved, details on the research, and information about the principal investigators. Project information included on the NIH RePORTER database dates as far back as 1985.
With this information publicly available, generating life sciences leads is as easy as following the funding to see which research projects are being supported. Search options are available to dive into analytics for individual researchers, organizations, and even by geographical region. Filters are also available to search by disease category, types of awards of awards, and funding timelines.
As of March 2020, the total amount of NIH funded research for active projects amounts to over $40 billion going towards more than 74,000 life science research projects. The states with the largest amount of total NIH funding and projects are California with nearly $5.9 billion going towards 10,467 projects, Massachusetts with $3.8 billion for 6,562 projects, New York with $3.8 billion for 6,908 projects, Maryland with $3.0 billion for 3,422 projects, and Pennsylvania with $2.4 billion going towards 4,695 projects.
These results align well with the fact that the largest biotech and pharmaceutical industries reside in Massachusetts and California with growing hubs across additional states. Many, if not all, of the top 10-20 pharmaceutical companies can be found within these regions.
Johns Hopkins University and The University of California San Francisco (UCSF) were the top two institutes that received the most NIH funding in 2019 at $763B and $685B respectively. In addition, there were 27 large academic organizations that received over a quarter of a billion dollars in research funding each that same year. At Johns Hopkins and at UCSF, 195 and 180 projects respectively received over $1M in research funding.
In 2019, 61% of total NIH funding was in the form of R01 research grants which amounted to nearly 30,000 funded grants.
When broken down by specific disease categories, the majority of funding for the last four years have consistently gone towards clinical research, genetics, prevention, and neurosciences. These categories have been developed by the NIH through its Research, Condition, and Disease Categorization (RCDC) system. A full list of research funding broken down by categorical spending can be found here.
As for funding success rates, roughly 20% of projects obtained funding out of more than 54,000 applications in 2019. The average funding amount per project for the same year was $553,679. As of 2017, there were over 33,000 Ph.D. level scientists that received NIH funding spread out in the life sciences, physical/earth sciences, math and computer sciences, psychology and social sciences, engineering, and other research fields.
These types of analyses are just a few examples of the information that can be gained from the NIH RePORTER database. In addition to those mentioned, NIH research funding can be broken down and analyzed in various ways. Funding categorized by individuals organizations, major research centers, funding type, small business research grants (SBIR), development awards, and fellowships can all be found here. The raw data is also provided in the form of downloadable Excel sheets for further data analytics and life science market research.
Using this information can be helpful when gathering lead information for the life science market. For more detailed information on a specific project or organization, simply refer to the NIH RePORTER database to learn more.