The Digital Healthcare Research (DHR) Program has a long history of advancing healthcare quality through digital technologies. We do this by supporting cutting-edge research, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and clinical decisions support (CDS), in the context of building the dynamic digital healthcare ecosystem (Figure 1) necessary for a healthier America.
Figure 1: Digital Healthcare EcosystemOur goal is to support an interconnected digital healthcare ecosystem that harnesses data from many sources (including directly from patients), synthesizes those data using tools like AI, and generates new knowledge that can be delivered through patient-centered CDS where and when it matters most.
In addition to AI and CDS, we explore technologies that support comprehensive and coordinated care and prevention, management, and treatment of chronic diseases. We investigate how innovative technologies and solutions can expand access, enhance quality, and improve safety, while also reducing the burden placed on health systems, clinicians, patients, families, and caregivers.
If you have questions about the DHR Program or the strategic areas we’re currently focused on, please send them to: DigitalHealthcareResearch@ahrq.hhs.gov
June 2025
Strategic Priorities
The Digital Healthcare Research Program at AHRQ supports innovative solutions to improve healthcare delivery and create value for patients and families. These are our current strategic priority areas to advance a healthier America.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing healthcare by enhancing diagnostics, personalizing treatment, and improving patient outcomes through advanced data-driven insights. AI can make healthcare more efficient and patient-centered, ultimately leading to better experiences and outcomes for providers, patients, and caregivers.
As AI adoption in healthcare accelerates, understanding how to develop, integrate, and evaluate these technologies safely and successfully is critical. AHRQ is interested in research that examines:
- AI’s role in clinical practice, workflow efficiency, provider decision-making, and assessing its impact on patient care; and
- AI’s potential to enhance patient engagement by providing tailored health information; supporting shared decision-making; and improving communication between providers, patients, and caregivers.
Through this research, AHRQ aims to ensure that AI-driven healthcare advancements are evidence-based and beneficial for all stakeholders, while addressing potential risks and challenges associated with AI implementation and use.
Clinical decision support (CDS) helps bring the latest evidence about what works in healthcare to clinicians, other care team members, and even patients so they can act more readily on this information. CDS, when inappropriately implemented for clinicians, can lead to alert fatigue, high override rates, and clinician frustration. When effectively implemented, CDS provides the right information to the right audiences in the right ways and at the right times.
Current research investigates how Patient-Centered Outcomes Research (PCOR) findings can be broadly disseminated into practice through shareable, interoperable CDS. These innovative projects study how reusable, interoperable CDS resources can make CDS development and implementation more efficient and, therefore, easier to incorporate evidence like PCOR findings into practice.
AHRQ is also advancing patient-centered CDS (PC CDS) through the CDS Innovation Collaborative (CDSiC). The CDSiC brings together patients, clinicians, health system leaders, and developers to show how co-design with patients can help CDS better meet the needs, preferences, and values of patients and their families. The CDSiC has produced dozens of resources—from measurement frameworks to prototype dashboards—conducted real-world pilot projects, and explored trustworthiness of CDS, including the use of AI.
High-quality, personalized healthcare remains critical, especially in areas with limited or no access to providers and services. To that end, AHRQ is interested in research that examines:
- How innovative digital healthcare technologies can enhance care access (e.g., virtual care) and delivery that support the individualized needs of patients, families, and caregivers; and
- How digital healthcare technologies can safely and accurately capture, collect, integrate, and effectively synthesize different types of health- and healthcare-related data, such as patient generated health data, data from electronic health records, patient-reported outcomes (e.g., how well patients are coping with chronic illness in their daily lives), genomic data, and social determinants of health data.
Digital health technologies can support the prevention, treatment, and management of chronic diseases including obesity, heart disease, diabetes, asthma, and cancer. AHRQ is interested in research that examines how innovative digital health technologies can:
- Safely and effectively detect disease earlier, provide real-time disease monitoring and management, and implement evidence-based personalized treatment for those with—or who are at risk of developing—chronic diseases; and
- Enhance patient engagement and empower patients to make healthy, evidence-based choices for chronic disease prevention, management, and treatment.