Introducing the 2025-2030 NIH Strategic Plan for Data Science: What Researchers Need to Know

NIH published the 2025-2030 Strategic Plan for Data Science, outlining five key goals that will shape the research data landscape. This strategic plan will encourage greater integration of data science to improve access to and use of biomedical and behavioral data. These efforts will increase the scientific community’s ability to address new challenges in accessing, managing, analyzing, integrating, and reusing the enormous amounts of data generated by the biomedical research enterprise.

Highlights of the plan include:

• Increased support for the NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy, with new tools and processes on the way
• New suggested methods for collecting informed consent when combining data from multiple sources
• Enhanced support for community-developed software tools with better visualization capabilities
• Progress towards a federated data ecosystem where researchers can more easily connect disparate datasets across platforms
• Increased data science training opportunities

Discover how NIH is transforming healthcare through data science in Dr. Gregurick's (Associate Director of Data Science) latest blog. Echoing what she said, “This strategic plan builds on significant progress made since the first Data Science Strategic Plan, with a renewed focus on partnership, capacity-building, and responsible innovation. As the research landscape evolves with unprecedented speed, NIH is working to ensure these powerful data tools and technologies benefit all Americans through more comprehensive scientific discoveries.”