Which health conditions are driving medical crowdfunding campaigns in the US? A Natural Language Processing Approach (Preprint)

UNSTRUCTURED In a contemporary analysis of more than 122,000 U.S. medical crowdfunding campaigns, we used an empirical NLP model to identify the 20 most common disease categories; these campaigns collectively raised approximately $531.6 million per year. Cancer accounted for the largest share, followed by injury-related and cardiovascular conditions. Only 9.2% of campaigns met their fundraising goals within 90 days of launch, with substantial variation across conditions—underscoring patient vulnerability and the limitations of U.S. insurance coverage and social safety nets.