The Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) continues to cultivate a rich tradition of translating bench discoveries to clinical applications by fostering a collaborative research environment designed to strengthen our efforts in tackling the world’s most challenging human diseases. Its success in biomedical research can in large part be attributed to the quality of its scientists and the commitment and support of departmental and hospital leadership in providing resources, space, and facilities to develop first-rate research programs. Particular research strengths in the department include translational and clinical research involving disease-oriented research, patient-oriented research, and population science.
The department's research community consists of more than 500 research faculty and 400 research fellows. Our investigators are nationally and internationally recognized for their achievements and are represented in some of medicine’s leading honorific societies such as:
The DOM’s research program consists of more than 1,400 active projects – basic, translational, clinical, and epidemiological. From 2015 through 2019, the DOM submitted 8,847 grants to various funding agencies; of these, 3,524 were awarded, yielding a 40 percent success rate for the department. The department continues to be among the most accomplished research enterprises in the country across all types of biomedical research, and is among the largest recipients of sponsored funding of any academic department.
Between 2015 and 2019, research expenditures in the department grew to $449 million, comprising nearly 70% of the overall BWH research enterprise. Since Dr. Loscalzo’s first full year as department chairman in 2006, the DOM’s research enterprise has grown by 99.6%. The DOM currently utilizes over 431,000 square feet of net assignable research space throughout the BWH campus. The department has research space across 22 buildings in Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, and Wellesley, MA.
In 2016, BWH opened the Hale Building for Transformative Medicine (BTM). BTM is 380,000 square feet dedicated to state-of- the-art outpatient clinical care, advanced imaging facilities, and research space. It is home to researchers and clinicians from across many disciplines who share a vision for collaboration and for the acceleration and translation of laboratory discoveries into rapid and novel treatments for patients. It also is a new home for the Orthopaedic and Arthritis Center of Excellence, within which are housed members of the Division of Rheumatology, Inflammation, and Immunity and the Division of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
The department has long been the home of groundbreaking, large-scale research studies, such as the Nurse’s Health Study, the Physician’s Health Study, and the Women’s Health Study, three world-renowned and long-running epidemiological studies.
