National Institutes of Health Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., today approved a federal report (PDF – 163KB) that lays out the long-term scientific vision for the NIH’s National Library of Medicine (NLM), the world’s largest biomedical library. This vision, presented today at the 110th meeting of the Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD), calls for NIH to position the NLM as a unifying force in biomedicine that promotes and accelerates knowledge generation, dissemination and understanding in the United States and internationally. The report also cites the need to make NLM the epicenter for biomedical data science, not just at NIH, but across the biomedical research enterprise. In addition, the report recommends dramatically expanding NLM’s activities to include research conducted beyond NIH’s walls to funded institutions, enabling it to have a greater and wider impact on data science than ever before. NIH plans to work with Congress to implement the necessary infrastructure changes to move this vision forward.
