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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

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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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Health Research Policy and Systems

ISSN: 1478-4505

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