NIH Funds Mobile Health IT Apps

If there's a mobile health IT app for that, the National Institutes for Health may be interested in helping to pay for it.

The NIH has issued about 150 grants totaling more than $36 million for mobile health IT applications so far this year, up from 30 grants in 2005 and double the number issued just two years ago, NIH Director Francis Collins said Monday at a conference on mobile technology and health care.

The NIH director was the keynote speaker at the mHealth Summit in Washington, D.C., which was expected to draw more than 2,000 participants. His comments were reported by the EnterpriseMobileToday.com, part of the technology website Internet.com, and by Mobihealthnews.com.

More than half of the NIH institutes have awarded grants for mobile-enabled research, according to Mobihealthnews.com. Grants for mobile health IT apps should continue to grow despite the expiration of related stimulus funding, Collins said.

NIH is setting up a five-day summer institute program next year in California to teach 25 junior investigators about best practices for mobile health IT research, he said, noting that a similar program could follow in 2012 on the East Coast. Details have yet to be announced.