The Digital Health R&D (DHRD) Interagency Working Group (IWG) aimed at improving the health of Americans by advancing technologies that support personalized health screening, monitoring, diagnosis, and treatment; disease prevention; emergency response; broad access to healthcare information and resources; and building and sustaining a diverse and highly skilled health IT workforce. The DHRD IWG reports investments across several Program Component Areas.
Overview
The Digital Health R&D (DHRD) Interagency Working Group was formed in 2010 as the Health Information Technology R&D IWG to coordinate Federal R&D for improving medical, functional, and public health outcomes across 15 participating agencies. Guided by the four fundamental challenges described in the Federal Health Information Technology Research & Development Strategic Framework, the IWG advances R&D by coordinating agency plans and activities, promoting collaborations, and providing a forum for exchanging information and articulating R&D needs to policy-makers and decision-makers.
Digital health, as defined by the FDA, includes a wide range of R&D areas, such as mobile health (mHealth), wearable devices, telehealth, and personalized medicine, as well as computing platforms, connectivity, software, sensors to collect data, and AI/ML to analyze health-related data.
Strategic Priorities
- Accelerate the R&D and implementation of next-generation accessible, interoperable, reconfigurable digital health tools, devices, and services, and enable faster patient and provider access to novel technology and point-of-care services.
- Promote innovation and workforce development in digital health to reduce health disparities, enhance equity, and achieve better health outcomes for all.
- Promote findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable health data with appropriate metadata to develop new healthcare-related insights supported by advanced technologies such as AI.
- Support the integration and use of digital health technologies within healthcare and public health systems to understand and mitigate the impacts of changes in climate and the environment on health.
- Develop appropriate privacy-preserving methods, strategies, and standards to enhance trust and confidence in digital health technologies.
Chair
 |
Wendy J. Nilsen Deputy Division Director Information and Intelligent Systems (CISE/IIS) U.S. National Science Foundation |
 |
Dana Wolff-Hughes Program Director, Risk Factor Assessment Branch Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program National Cancer Institute National Institute of Health |
Technical Coordinator
 |
Olachi Onyewu |
Activities
- Federal Listening Session on Interoperability of Medical Devices, Data, and Platforms to Enhance Patient Care, Silver Spring, Maryland, July 17, 2019.
Publications
- Digital Health Lessons Learned During COVID-19 Workshop Report, Digital Health R&D IWG, June 30, 2023.
- Federal Health Information Technology Research and Development Strategic Framework, HITRD IWG, NITRD Subcommittee, National Science and Technology Council, March 2020.
- Federal Register Notice: 84 FR 4544, Request for Information: Action on Interoperability of Medical Devices, Data, and Platforms To Enhance Patient Care, NITRD Subcommittee, submitted by the National Science Foundation, February 15, 2019. Public Responses