Strategic Planning

The NIH conducted planning activities to inform the Precision Medicine with AI: Integrating Imaging with Multimodal Data (PRIMED-AI) program concept. This concept will aim to harness advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to enable integration of clinical imaging data with a variety of other health data to support the clinical decision-making process. Such a program would transform disease prevention, detection, diagnosis, and treatment, ultimately improving patient outcomes. The NIH Council of Councils approved PRIMED-AI as a Common Fund program in April 2025 - view the videocast (starting at 04:00:30).

Strategic planning activities focused on a Landscape Analysis, Request for Information, and Strategic Planning Workshop.

Landscape Analysis landscape

The objectives of the PRIMED-AI landscape analysis were to survey, explore, and identify applications of AI, machine learning (ML), and deep learning (DL) in biomedical and clinical research related to the integration of medical imaging and non-imaging multimodal data for precision medicine. Current activity and near-term trends in this landscape were analyzed for their ability to deliver innovative solutions in patient care and improve patient outcomes. This analysis informed the development of the PRIMED-AI program concept. 

A summary of the landscape analysis is available here.

Request for Information rfi

The Common Fund issued a Request for Information (RFI, NOT-RM-24-011) to identify high priority challenges and opportunities in developing trustworthy, cost-effective, accessible, ethical, and sustainable precision medicine AI algorithms that integrate medical images with other patient-related data to support clinical decision making. Community input was requested on:  

• Imaging and related multimodal data integration approaches
• Developing AI-based clinical decision support tools that leverage clinical imaging and multimodal data integration
• Demonstrating clinical utility of multimodal algorithms for precision medicine.

A summary and full report of the request for information responses is available here.

Strategic Planning Workshop workshop

As part of strategic planning activities, the NIH Common Fund hosted a virtual workshop to engage subject matter experts, community members, and NIH staff in a discussion of high-priority areas for the NIH to consider when developing the PRIMED-AI program concept. The primary focus was to identify opportunities and challenges to enable precision medicine with artificial intelligence (AI) through the integration of clinical imaging and multimodal data. The session topics included:

1. Developing algorithms that leverage multimodal data to solve clinical needs
2. Accessing and preparing AI-ready imaging and multimodal data to enable interoperability
3. Validating and implementing clinical imaging and multimodal AI
4. Ethical considerations for the use of imaging based, multimodal AI clinical decision support tools

These topics were explored in a series of informational presentations and discussion sessions featuring various expert speakers and panelists with a variety of expertise. The discussion sessions were guided by questions from the panelists and from participants. 

A summary and full report of the strategic planning workshop is available here.