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Issued by

National Library of Medicine (NLM)

Purpose

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) seeks insights, comments, and suggestions related to biomedical informatics and data science research priorities for its Division of Extramural Programs (EP).

This Request for Information (RFI) offers health sciences and public libraries, health professionals, researchers, public health workers, community organizations, the public, or any other interested party the opportunity to provide information regarding biomedical informatics and data science research gaps, transformative opportunities, and underexplored areas that NLM could address through its extramural research programs. 

Background

NLM’s Extramural Programs (EP) play a key role in advancing biomedical informatics and data science research, aligning with the NIH Strategic Plan for Data Science and the NLM Strategic Plan. These efforts empower researchers, clinicians, and communities by supporting the development of cutting-edge tools, methodologies, and knowledge to address complex health and research challenges.

Informatics domains such as bioinformatics, translational bioinformatics, clinical informatics, public health informatics, and consumer health informatics are at the forefront of innovation that enable precision medicine, early disease detection, and scalable public health solutions. However, unlocking the full potential of these domains requires a clear, strategic vision that aligns emerging research with long-term impact. In response to the world’s rapid advancements in these areas, NLM is embarking on a transformative journey to define the next phase of priorities for its Extramural Programs that will catalyze groundbreaking research and foster interdisciplinary collaboration to address the most pressing challenges in public health. Central to this endeavor is a robust science vision that reflects emerging opportunities in informatics and data science and advances the impact of new tools such as artificial intelligence (AI).

Significant advances in biomedical informatics and data science have transformed research and healthcare. NLM’s investments have supported:

• Data Science: Support for innovative approaches to manage and analyze large scale biomedical data, development of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) data ecosystems, scalable data management, generalizable analytic algorithms, and reproducibility-focused tools.
• Bioinformatics Translational Bioinformatics and Computational Biology: Creation of innovative statistical and computational tools and methods for multi-omics analysis and translational pipelines for biomarker discovery. Investments in translational bioinformatics to bridge basic biological discoveries and clinical applications.
• Clinical Informatics: Support for development and integration of clinical decision support systems into healthcare workflows, creation of digital health tools, decision support management systems, as well as research on EHR integration, usability interoperability, and tools to streamline clinical documentation while reducing burden.
• Public Health Informatics: Investments to enhance disease surveillance systems, modeling tools for population health, and solutions modeling population health trends and public health interventions.
• Personal Health Informatics: Support for consumer technologies including wearable devices, innovative personal health data collection, integration, analysis, and personalized risk assessments and interpretation.

While these achievements are substantial, advancing the biomedical informatics and data science fields requires bold strategies that address systemic gaps and elevate cross-domain innovations.

Information Requested

This RFI invites input from interested stakeholders to inform the NLM science vision for extramural research, ensuring that NLM's funding priorities are forward-looking, impactful, and positioned to accelerate/support groundbreaking discoveries in biomedicine and health. NLM is seeking comment on the following topics.

A. Vision for the Future

A forward-looking science vision requires anticipating emerging trends, critical challenges, and transformative opportunities. Responses in this section will help define baseline knowledge, pinpoint unmet needs and identify foundational advancements needed to accelerate progress. These insights will shape the foundation of the science vision by aligning future investments with unmet needs and emerging opportunities.

Input Requested:

• Significant unmet needs in biomedical informatics and data science, particularly those that require innovative, cross-domain solutions to drive transformative advancements across multiple areas of research.
• Key challenges in biomedical informatics and data science that necessitate groundbreaking solutions, especially those that bridge multiple domains and have broad transformative implications for research and practice.
• Foundational tools and methods that can be developed to support broad, scalable applications and enable next generation research.

B. Strategic Focus Areas

NLM aims to identify high-impact research areas with the greatest potential for impact while addressing gaps in current funding priorities. This section includes transformative opportunities in AI, data science infrastructure, interdisciplinary collaboration and emerging scientific challenges that require strategic investment.

Input Requested:

• Underexplored areas or specific gaps in NLM’s current funding investments and how addressing these research gaps can lead to transformative impact or advancements.
• How existing biomedical informatics categories (i.e., bioinformatics, clinical informatics, translational bioinformatics, public health informatics, and personal health informatics) can evolve to align with contemporary challenges or evolve to address emerging scientific and technological challenges.
• Emerging or underexplored areas in data science and biomedical informatics that have the greatest potential to drive transformative advancements and should be prioritized for future research investments.
• Emerging AI technologies that hold the most promise for advancing biomedical discovery, clinical decision-making, or public health interventions.
• New methodologies that are needed and key challenges to ensure AI systems are reliable, generalizable, secure and scalable across a variety of datasets, populations, and environments.
• How AI can be leveraged to enhance the integration of complex, multi-modal data and address scalability challenges across research domains.
• The most significant cross-domain challenges where AI could have a transformative impact, and what foundational advancements are needed to address them.
• Critical challenges in data access, integration, and representation that hinder research advancements in data science and biomedical informatics.
• Strategies and or frameworks that NLM can implement to enable scalable and innovative data sharing while addressing privacy, security and accessibility concerns.
• Infrastructure, tools or frameworks that are needed to support interdisciplinary and multi-institutional collaboration in biomedical informatics research.

C. Additional Comments

To ensure no critical areas are overlooked, we invite respondents to provide additional insights that may not fit within the categories above but are critical to advance the fields of biomedical informatics and data science.

How to Submit a Response

Comments must be submitted electronically via the submission website: https://forms.office.com/g/X15AJ3tmbH by July 14, 2025. Please limit your comments to no more than 300 words per sub-topic.

Responses to this RFI are voluntary and may be submitted anonymously. You may voluntarily include your name, organizational affiliation, role, and/or contact information with your response. Please do not include any personally identifiable or other information that you do not wish to make public. Proprietary, classified, confidential, or sensitive information should not be included in responses.

The Government will use the information submitted in response to this RFI at its discretion. The Government reserves the right to use any submitted information on public websites, in reports, in summaries of the state-of-the-science, in any possible resultant solicitation(s), grant(s), or cooperative agreement(s), or in the development of future funding opportunities announcements

This RFI is for information and planning purposes only and is not a solicitation for applications or an obligation on the part of the Government to provide support for any ideas identified in response to it. Please note that the Government will not pay for the preparation of any information submitted or for the use of that information. 

Inquiries

Please direct all inquiries to:

Division of Extramural Programs

Email: [email protected]