Across the UK, public bodies and medical research charities support a vast range of health research. The most recent UK Health Research Analysis gives a sense of the scale: it covered more than 23,500 awards from 173 funding organisations and over £5 billion in health research spending in 2022.
For two decades, UK Health Research Analyses have shown the value of bringing this information together. However, the analyses have provided only periodic historical snapshots rather than a dynamic view of the changing funding landscape. A timely view is needed to answer questions such as: Who is funding what? Where is research taking place? How is investment changing over time?
The Medical Research Council (MRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), is working with Europe PMC, hosted by EMBL-EBI, to develop the UK Health Research Funding Portfolio Database and Interactive Dashboard. The project is in response to Action 11.1 of the UK Government’s Life Sciences Sector Plan, which calls for closer coordination across health and life sciences funders.
Planned for release in March 2027, the tool will use the established health and research activity classifications and a user-friendly dashboard to bring more of the breadth and diversity of this investment into a coherent, regularly updated view.
The public-facing dashboard will make it easier to explore award data from participating UK funders. For example, a funder could compare the number and value of awards across years, examine investment by health category and research activity, and identify potential overlap or complementary activity. Researchers and institutions could see which funders and recipient organisations are active in related areas and where work is taking place. Industry and investors could use the same view to understand UK research strengths, see how investment is changing across locations and research areas, and identify potential partnership opportunities.
Europe PMC has long supported open science by linking grants to publications and other research outputs, helping users understand the outputs and wider impact of investment, and by making grant data openly available through its Grant Finder and application programming interface (API). Furthermore, by integrating persistent identifiers Europe PMC is connecting variations in names and making grant searches more consistent.
Although the data resulting from this project is UK-focused for now, the expanded data model remains applicable for Europe PMC’s international funder group. The longstanding infrastructure that supports Europe PMC funders in linking grants to research outputs will be rebuilt as a modern, scalable, open-source infrastructure. Future growth of the tool could incorporate further datasets and categorisation.
The value of the dashboard will depend on the quality and coverage of the data contributed to it.
The Europe PMC team welcomes interest from public bodies and medical research charities that fund health research and are interested in supporting this project and exploring the wider benefits of joining the Europe PMC funder group.
Read a more detailed description of the project and find the contact details on the Europe PMC blog.
Edit
Facts Only
* 23,500 awards were covered by 173 funding organizations in 2022.
* UK health research spending reached over £5 billion in 2022.
* The Medical Research Council (MRC), part of UKRI, is working with Europe PMC (hosted by EMBL-EBI).
* The project aims to develop the UK Health Research Funding Portfolio Database and Interactive Dashboard.
* The tool is planned for release in March 2027.
* The dashboard will use established health and research activity classifications.
* The dashboard will allow users to compare award data across years, examine investment by health category and research activity, and identify potential overlaps.
* Europe PMC links grants to publications and outputs openly via Grant Finder and API.
Executive Summary
Public bodies and medical research charities support a wide range of health research across the UK, with 23,500 awards from 173 funding organizations and over £5 billion in spending in 2022. Previous UK Health Research Analyses provided periodic historical snapshots. A new initiative is underway by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and Europe PMC to develop a UK Health Research Funding Portfolio Database and Interactive Dashboard. This tool aims to provide a dynamic view of investment by utilizing established classifications to show who funds what, where research occurs, and how investment changes over time.
The public-facing dashboard will allow users to explore award data from UK funders, enabling comparisons across years, health categories, and research activities, facilitating the identification of overlaps or complementary work for researchers, institutions, industry, and investors. Europe PMC has a history of linking grants to outputs openly and improving grant search consistency through persistent identifiers. While the current project focuses on UK data, the underlying data model is designed to support Europe PMC’s international funder group infrastructure, which will be rebuilt as scalable, open-source infrastructure.
Full Take
The transition from periodic historical snapshots to a dynamic view represents a shift from archival reporting to real-time strategic insight in health investment. The development of the centralized dashboard signals an acknowledgment that the current system fails to support contemporary decision-making needs for researchers, funders, and investors. This move seeks to democratize access to complex data, moving it from static historical review to actionable intelligence regarding research strength and geographical distribution.
The integration with Europe PMC’s existing open science infrastructure demonstrates a pattern of leveraging established systems—linking grants to outputs—to build new, scalable platforms. The value proposition hinges on the quality and coverage of data contributed, implying that data governance and standardized classification are as critical as the technical delivery of the dashboard itself. A potential implication is that true research ecosystem development requires not just collecting massive datasets but establishing universally accepted methodologies for categorizing complex, multi-layered investment streams.
The focus on building an open-source infrastructure suggests a recognition that centralized, proprietary systems often create barriers to the collaborative growth seen in open science efforts. The challenge then becomes ensuring that the aggregated data structure supports complex analytical queries—such as identifying complementary activity or partnership opportunities—rather than simply aggregating expenditure totals. What mechanisms will be established to ensure the resulting view of UK research strengths promotes equitable investment across diverse, potentially competing, areas?