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

Table 6 Funding organizations’ use of classification systems for reporting health research expenditures

	Funding organization	Country	Health categories	Recipient countries or regions	Type of research	Data classification system for health categories
1	NIH	USA	Yes	Yes	Yes	RCDC
2	EC	EU	No	No	No	–
2a	FP7 Cooperation programme, health theme	EU	No	Yes	Yes	–
2b	ERC	EU	No	No	No	–
3	MRC	GBR	Yes	Yes	Yes	HRCS (modified ICD-10)
4	INSERM	FRA	No	–	–	–
5	US DoD	USA	No	–	–	–
5a	CDMRP	USA	Yes	Yes	Yes	"Physiology" classification^b
6	Wellcome Trust	GBR	Yes	Yes	Yes	HRCS (modified ICD-10)
7	CIHR	CAN	Yes^a	Yes	Yes	EIS Research Area and Research Class taxonomy in Research Reporting system^a
8	NHMRC	AUS	Yes	Yes	Yes	ANZSRC (modified ICD-10)
9	HHMI	USA	No	–	–	–
10	DFG	DEU	No	No	No	–

“–” means that we were not able to find information for this field
See Table 4 for funders’ abbreviations. ANZSRC, Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification; EIS, Electronic Information System; HRCS, Health Research Classification System; ICD, International Classification of Diseases; RCDC, Research, Condition, and Disease Categorization
^aAt the time of data collection, CIHR was in the process of implementing its data classification system. It did not publicly report data yet on how much funding goes to various health areas, but noted that it would do so in the future. CIHR was able to provide us with data for several health areas via personal communication. The organization noted through the same personal communication that, in terms of classifying or reporting on the research that it funds, CIHR uses the EIS Research Area and Research Class in-house menu, Institute in-house Keyword lists, the Thompson Reuters Fields and Sub-Fields, and MESH. The Research Reporting system uses the EIS Research Area and Research Class taxonomy (http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/45318.html)
^bThis classification was sent to us by CDMRP upon request. All other classifications are publicly available