NIH seeks to engage patients as it scales use of AI with Bio Genesis Mission

The National Institutes of Health is opening multiple avenues for patient feedback as it scales its use of artificial intelligence through the Bio Genesis Mission, the agency's contribution to the Trump administration's broader Genesis Mission, NIH Chief AI Officer Bradley Bower said Thursday at the Special Competitive Studies Project's AI+ Health Summit. Bower said "pretty much every new AI-focused program we're building up" includes a co-design approach involving patients, clinicians and other stakeholders, citing the AIM-AHEAD program started in 2021, the PRIMED-AI precision medicine program and the Bridge2AI dataset creation program. The Bio Genesis Mission, announced in July, targets six domains — predicting living systems, scaling biology for industrial leadership, detecting biological threats early, accelerating drug discovery, unlocking pediatric cancer cures and uncovering the root causes of chronic disease — and aims for tangible results within five to 10 years, with NIH in early talks on coordinating with CMS and FDA.

NIH seeks to engage patients as it scales use of AI with Bio Genesis Mission The agency is in the early stages of determining how exactly it will collaborate with other agencies on the Bio Genesis Mission it announced in July. The National Institutes of Health is opening multiple avenues for patient feedback as it increasingly adopts artificial intelligence through initiatives such as the Bio Genesis Mission, the agency’s contribution to the Trump administration’s broader Genesis Mission https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/11/launching-the-genesis-mission/ . “That's what we want. We want to see that active engagement in the community,” Bradley Bower, NIH’s Chief AI Officer, said Thursday at the Special Competitive Studies Project’s AI+ Health Summit. “Pretty much every new AI-focused program we're building up… all of them include a co-design approach where patients, clinicians, anybody that is engaged as a stakeholder in the process has to be involved,” Bower added. NIH’s AIM-AHEAD program https://datascience.nih.gov/artificial-intelligence/aim-ahead , which seeks to instill AI expertise in biomedical researchers from underserved communities, is one example of an agency initiative looking to learn from patients, according to Bower. The program, originally started in 2021, relies on national networks of institutions and organizations to teach researchers how to harness AI for medical imaging, electronic health record data analysis and other applications. The AIM-AHEAD networks are looking to train researchers in keeping patients and communities engaged in research initiatives as the program moves into its next phase, said Bower. Besides the AIM-AHEAD program, an NIH precision medicine program, PRIMED-AI https://commonfund.nih.gov/primed-ai/strategic-planning , and a dataset creation program, Bridge2AI https://commonfund.nih.gov/bridge2ai , feature a co-design approach where patients, clinicians and other stakeholders shape AI development. NIH’s focus on including patient voices in AI development comes as the agency is turning to AI and advanced computing to double the pace of biomedical innovation under the Bio Genesis Mission. That initiative, announced in July, specifically focuses on advancing science across six domains: predicting living systems, scaling biology for industrial leadership, detecting biological threats early, accelerating drug discovery, unlocking pediatric cancer cures and uncovering the root causes of chronic disease. The Bio Genesis Mission is using advanced AI tools to analyze large and complex datasets, helping researchers identify previously undetected patterns, generate new hypotheses and identify new treatments, according to an HHS press release https://www.hhs.gov/press-room/hhs-joins-genesis-mission-ai-chronic-disease-research.html . The Bio Genesis Mission aspires to attain tangible results within the next five to 10 years. In addition to collaborating with patients, NIH is in the early stages of determining how to work with other agencies to advance the Bio Genesis Mission. “We are early in those conversations, sort of figuring out how all the pieces fit together. Early in the conversations of figuring out kind of how the Health and Human Services Department might coordinate those versus what NIH will help coordinate and lead,” Bower told Nextgov/FCW . In remarks during the AI+ Health Summit, Bower signaled NIH will collaborate with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Food and Drug Administration to bring Bio Genesis Mission discoveries to patients. FDA will help create a “faster path to market” for new discoveries that come from NIH’s initiative, he said. While he did not explain how CMS would support the initiative, that agency notably enables drug market access by determining what Medicare will cover for seniors. “CMS, FDA, NIH are all interested in making sure things get translated to the market in a safe and effective way, that things are validated appropriately,” Bower told Nextgov/FCW . The HHS press release announcing the Bio Genesis Mission said NIH, FDA and the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health would work together on the initiative. Within the next 12 months, Bower expects NIH will have “solid infrastructure” within the agency and across HHS to collaborate on the Bio Genesis Mission. “What we're looking at is lowering some of the barriers to how we work with other agencies. How do we get a Memorandum of Understanding in place faster? How do we get an interagency agreement in place faster?” he said.