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Table 1 Annual health research expenditures of 55 major public and philanthropic funders of health research

From: The 10 largest public and philanthropic funders of health research in the world: what they fund and how they distribute their funds

# Public and philanthropic health research funding organizations Country Type of funding organization Year for which funding data were collected Total health research expenditures (in million 2013 US $) Specificity of the funding dataa Research area that the funding data refer toa Reporting format of the funding dataa
1 National Institutes of Health (NIH) USA Public 2013 26,081.3 I A 1
2 European Commission (EC)b EU Public 2013 3717.7 II A 1
  2a FP7 - Cooperation programme - Health Theme/Health Directorate c EU Public 2013 1181.7 II A 1
  2b European Research Council (ERC) EU Public 2013 783.4 II A 1
3 UK Medical Research Council (MRC) GBR Public 2013 1321.5 I A 1
4 Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale (Inserm) FRA Public 2013 1041.2 I A 1
5 United States Department of Defense (US DoD)b USA Public 2013 1017.7 I A 2
  5a Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program (CDMRP) USA Public 2012 409.0 I A 1
6 Wellcome Trustd GBR Philanthropic 2013 909.1 I A 1
7 Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) CAN Public 2012 883.6 I A 1
8 Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) AUS Public 2013 777.6 I A 1
9 Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) USA Philanthropic 2013 752.0 I A 1
10 Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft / German Research Foundation (DFG) DEU Public 2012 630.6 I A 1
11 National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) CHN Public 2012 621.3 II A 1
12 Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) FRA Public 2013 531.0 III B 2
13 UK Department of Health / National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) GBR Public 2012 491.2 I A 1
14 Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS) JPN Public 2011 472.5 I A 1
15 Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung / Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany (BMBF) DEU Public 2013 472.1 I A 1
16 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF)e USA Philanthropic 2011 462.6 I A 1
17 Ministero della Salute / Ministry of Health of Italy ITA Public 2007 438.6 I A 2
18 Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII)e ESP Public 2011 388.2 I A 1
19 Ministry of Health of China CHN Public 2011 371.7 I A 1
20 Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST)e JPN Public 2012 338.5 I C 2
21 Institut Pasteur FRA Philanthropic 2013 220.9 I A 1
22 Singapore National Medical Research Council (NMRC) SGP Public 2012 220.7 – A 1
23 Korean National Research Foundation (NRF) KOR Public 2011 191.5 I A 1
24 Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET)e ARG Public 2012 184.4 II B 1
25 Vetenskapsrådet-Medicine / Swedish Research Council SWE Public 2012 177.9 – A 1
26 Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) CHE Public 2012 172.9 I A 1
27 ZonMw / Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development NLD Public 2012 172.7 I A 1
28 Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)e BRA Public 2012 154.2 I A 1
29 Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) IND Public 2011 140.3 I A 3
30 Fund for Scientific Research - Flanders (FWO) BEL Public 2010 136.9 I A 1
31 Korea National Institute of Health (KNIH) KOR Public 2013 120.0 III A 2
32 Forskingsrådet / Research Council of Norway NOR Public 2012 113.5 III A 2
33 Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) BRA Public 2013 110.8 I A 2
34 Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung / Austrian Science Fund (FWF) AUT Public 2012 99.5 I C 1
35 South African Medical Research Council (SA MRC) ZAF Public 2012 63.2 I A 3
36 Health Research Council of New Zealand NZL Public 2012 61.6 III A 1
37 Danish Council for Independent Research / Medical Sciences DNK Public 2012 58.5 II A 1
38 Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR) RUS Public 2013 53.6 III B 2
39 Danish Council for Strategic Research (two programmes: Individuals, Disease and Society & Health, Food and Welfare) DNK Public 2012 40.3 II C 1
40 Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT) MEX Public 2010 21.9 II A 2
41 South African Department of Science and Technology (DST) ZAF Public 2012 13.5 I B 1
42 Agencia Nacional de Promocion Cientifica y Technologica (Agenica - ANPCyT) ARG Public – No data – – –
43 Biomedical Research Council of the Singapore Agency for Science, Technology and Research (BMRC of A*STAR) SGP Public – No data – – –
44 Ministry of Science and Technology of China (MOST) CHN Public – No data – – –
45 Indian Department of Biotechnology (DBT) IND Public – No data – – –
46 Indian Department of Science and Technology (DST) IND Public – No data – – –
47 King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) SAU Public – No data – – –
48 Le Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS) BEL Public – No data – – –
49 Lipi Indonesian Research Council IDN Public – No data – – –
50 Ministry of Healthcare of the Russian Federation RUS Public – No data – – –
51 National Research Foundation South Africa (NRF SA) ZAF Public – No data – – –
52 Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) BRA Philanthropic – No data – – –
53 Rockefeller foundation USA Philanthropic – No data – – –
54 Tubitak / Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey TUR Public – No data – – –
55 Turkish Academy of Sciences (TUBA) TUR Public – No data – – –
  Total for the 10 largest funders of health research     37,132.2    
  Total for funders 11 to 41     7116.2    
  Total for all 41 funding organizations for which data were available     44,248.3    
  1. Dashes (“–”) indicate that no information was available. Funders of Official Development Assistance (ODA) and multilaterals funders are excluded from this table and are reported separately. Data presented in the table are from the most recent year available at the time of data collection. Reported expenditures on health research can differ from what funders themselves report, because we excluded operational costs for managing the funding organization where possible, and because we excluded funding for research education
  2. aFunders report differently on their expenditures. Preferably, we collected information on the actual expenditures of a funder in the area of health research, excluding funders’ operational costs. However, this information was not always available. Therefore, we describe here the type of data that we collected, in terms of how funding organizations report annual health research expenditures (i.e. I, actual expenditures; II, commitments; or III, budgets), in terms of the research areas that their reported numbers pertain to (i.e. A, only health research; B, health and biological research; or C, life sciences research), and in terms of what the expenditures cover (i.e. 1, total expenditures on health research excluding operational costs; 2, total expenditures on health research including also operational costs; or 3, total overall turnover for the funder over a single fiscal year)
  3. bTwo funders consisted of several sub-programmes with very different funding distribution mechanisms and patterns. (1) For the European Commission: Under the EC the FP7 was the largest research program in FY 2007–2013. The ERC and Cooperation programme - Health theme (the Health Directorate is the executive agency for the latter) are both programmes run under FP7. Under the FP7 there are several funding programmes: Ideas – ERC, Cooperation programme, People – Marie Curie, Capacity Program, CIP and Euratom. Due to this large number of funding programmes, and the differences between the funding programmes, we reviewed the two largest funding programmes: the Cooperation – Health theme and the Ideas – ERC programme. (2) For the US DoD: The defence health program holds 14 research programmes. We chose to review the largest programme, which was identified as the CDMRP
  4. cThe ERC was able to provide figures for its funding distribution mechanisms in the area of Life Sciences, not of health research. However, the website www.healthcompetence.eu provided figures of health research funding by the ERC. For consistency, figures for the Health theme of the FP7 Cooperation programme were extracted from the same website. There are slight deviations between these figures and the health research spending reported by FP7 Cooperation programme itself
  5. dThe annual expenditures for the Wellcome Trust are a slight overestimation for health research spending. Under Medical Humanities and engagement, various non-research grants are provided as well as other activities (e.g. running the Wellcome library), but these were not reported on separately, and are therefore included under ‘Research’
  6. eInformation was collected from official websites and annual reports. For these five organizations, information was not publicly available, and was acquired through personal communication with a representative of the organization
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