Health research funding in Germany

In Germany, a great amount of money is spent annually on health research (HR). However, detailed quantitative data concerning funders and receivers of the financing is lacking. The goal of this paper is to depict the scope to which funders finance HR and the amount of money research institutions receive for their research activities. First, openly accessible sources were searched to identify the relevant data for 2013. Missing data was requested from the specific institutions. Where relevant data could not be identified, approximate results were determined or marked as missing. In 2013, approximately 10.14 billion EUR were spent on HR. The most important funders were business (58%) and public agencies (36%). Business mainly funded privately financed research institutions, while public agencies mainly funded universities and non-university research institutions. Overall, privately financed research institutions received 55% of the research money, universities 34%, non-university research institutions 9%, and 2% of the money went to federal institutions. In Germany, the biggest share of health research money is spent and consumed by the private sector. The pattern of financing health research in Germany is comparable to other countries where data are available.