The draft Medical Research and Innovation Strategy aims to bring new forms of technology into the future fund’s ‘strategic objectives’.
The strategy underpinning the Medical Research Future Fund is up for its five-yearly review, with a slew of newly proposed objectives set to be added.
As of March 2026, the MRFF was valued at $25.2 billion. As part of the May budget, the federal government invested a further $508.5 million over four years.
The type of research that the MRFF funds is guided by two documents – the Australian Medical Research and Innovation Strategy and the Australian Medical Research and Innovation Priorities.
The strategy is refreshed every five years, and the priorities are refreshed every two years.
It just so happens that both documents are up for review in 2026.
Draft versions of both the strategy and the priorities are online now.
Under the existing strategy, which was last set in 2021, the MRFF objectives included delivering: equitable health outcomes through research-informed preventive health across primary, secondary and tertiary care; health and economic benefits through translation of outcomes into policy; and a sustainable, nimble health research workforce.
The proposed new strategic objectives differ significantly.
While still includes a reference to health equity, the specific mention of primary, secondary and tertiary care is gone.
A new addition to the list of objectives includes an aim to deliver “transformation of health care through AI and digital health advances that integrate preventive health, diagnostics and therapeutics across the care continuum”.
There is also a new reference to building a climate-resilient health and medical research sector.
The proposed new set of priorities also focusses in on technology; AI in research and health systems tops the list, followed by integrated digital health systems.
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“The establishment of safe, trusted and innovative AI-enabled health care requires nationally coordinated, expert-led and evidence-based approaches, with strong governance, consumer involvement and transparency at every stage of research,” the draft document reads.
“Building Australia’s sovereign AI capability will strengthen research to translate into more effective, equitable care, particularly for priority populations, wherever they live.”
Integrated digital health tools, it said, will be “essential” to delivering efficient and equitable care.
Other draft priorities for research work include advanced therapeutics, environmental health, “multiomics-informed” healthcare, and determinants of health.
The remaining priorities are to back Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-directed research, embed research into the health system where possible, and ensure a skilled and sustainable research workforce.
