Abstract
Over several months, representatives from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science and National Institutes of Health (NIH) had a number of meetings that lead to the conclusion that innovations in the Nation's health care could be realized by more directed interactions between NIH and DOE. It became clear that the expertise amassed and instrumentation advances developed at the DOE physical science laboratories to enable cutting-edge research in particle physics could also feed innovation in medical healthcare. To meet their scientific mission, the DOE laboratories created advances in such technologies as particle beam generation, radioisotope production, high-energy particle detection and imaging, superconducting particle accelerators, superconducting magnets, cryogenics, high-speed electronics, artificial intelligence, and big data. To move forward, NIH and DOE initiated the process of convening a joint workshop which occurred on July 12th and 13th, 2021. This Special Report presents a summary of the findings of the collaborative workshop and introduces the goals of the next one.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | e53-e61 |
| Journal | Medical Physics |
| Volume | 50 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Mar 2023 |
Funding
The authors thank NIH and DOE Office of Science for providing funds to facilitate the workshop. Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator is operated for the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Nuclear Physics under contract DE-AC05-06OR23177. Opinions presented in this work represent those of the authors and do not represent official statements, opinions, or positions of the United States Government. This material should not be interpreted as representing the viewpoint of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, or the NIBIB and NCI. This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the U.S. Government retains a non-exclusive, paid up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of the manuscript, or allow others to do so, for U.S. Government purposes. The DOE will provide public access to these results in accordance with the DOE Public access Plan (https://www.osti.gov/public-access). Links that currently exist between NIH and DOE have proven to be impactful—and additional links can and should be developed. This was the universal theme presented by leadership from DOE, NIBIB, and NCI. Infrastructure across the country was summarized, as was the grant portfolio that supported taking DOE science to patient care. Areas where relationships were already strong were highlighted: nuclear medicine detectors, beamlines, radiopharmaceuticals, and data science/computing. Improving the coordination of grant opportunities via closer communication and development of new ways to co‐optimize synergy and resource utilization were areas identified for attention. By working together, it was hoped the scope and scale of proposed research could be expanded within the same funding limit. This “scope scale up” was noted as a focus area. Translational opportunities were felt to be many, and all speakers concluded it was the proper time and of mutual benefit to move the agencies’ scientific collaboration closer. One challenge identified for productive collaborations between national DOE laboratories and NIH investigators is how to match long‐term priorities with the timeline of funding opportunities, the latter being typically 2–5 years. This is particularly true in the computation and the electronics/instrumentation fields where the national laboratories have cutting‐edge instrumentation. However, the technical developments are on a timeline that is typically longer than the NIH funding timescale. Special emphasis was placed on the development of the next generation of scientists. Mentorship was noted to be a universally valued area on which to focus. 3,4
Keywords
- Department of Energy
- National Institutes of Health
- inter-agency collaboration