Insights | Spinverse

Explore exciting EU funding opportunities in life science and health

Written by Spinverse | Oct 24, 2023 11:29:21 AM

Several European programmes are implementing EU’s political priorities in the health area. Learn about the many funding opportunities and upcoming calls in the health sector and do not hesitate to contact our funding experts if you want to know more and learn how to increase your chances of preparing a successful funding application.

Horizon Europe (HE) - Pillar II Cluster 1: Health

The focus of this cluster is life science, health and medtech. The budget for 2021 – 2027 is 8.2 B€.
Some key areas in Cluster 1:

  • Innovative health and care systems
  • Personalized medicine and digital health
  • Infectious diseases, including pandemic preparedness
  • Cancer research and prevention
  • Mental health and well-being.

Horizon Europe funds different types of collaborative projects such as:

Research and innovation action (RIA) - establishes new knowledge or explores a new or improved technology, product, process, service or solution. Funding covers up to 100% of the project costs.

Innovation action (IA) - produces plans or designs for new or improved products, processes or services including prototyping, testing, demonstrating, piloting, large-scale product validation and market replication. Funding covers up to 70% of the project costs for private organisations and 100% for research and technological organisations (RTOs).

Consortium & calls

For most calls for proposals, you must apply as a team of at least 3 partner organisations from 3 different EU or associated countries. At least one of the 3 partners must be from an EU country. In addition to these 3 partners, organisations from other countries might be able to join your consortium. A successful consortium should include both academia, industry, health care and patient organizations so if you are interested in a specific call Spinverse can help you to get a competitive consortium in place.

What will be funded in 2024?

There will be several calls in health during 2024, some of which are already announced (deadline in April):

  • Pandemic preparedness and response: Host-pathogen interactions of infectious diseases with epidemic potential
  • Bio-printing of living cells for regenerative medicine
  • Gaining experience and confidence in New Approach Methodologies (NAM) for regulatory safety and efficacy testing – coordinated training and experience exchange for EU regulators.

There are also calls in e.g. Cluster 4 (Digital, Industry and Space) that involve health applications in combination with AI.

Innovative Health Initiative (IHI)

The Innovative Health Initiative (IHI) aims to translate health research and innovation into real benefits for patients and society and ensure that Europe remains at the cutting edge of interdisciplinary, sustainable, patient-centric health research. The total budget is 2.4 B€.

What will be funded in 2024?

IHI encourages the development of tools, data, platforms, technologies, and processes that facilitate the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and management of diseases, especially in areas where there is an unmet public health need. Innovative non-animal approaches, new clinical applications of theranostics solutions, comprehensive stroke management, and synthetic data generation will be the main focus for single stage calls in 2024. One key element in IHI projects is the strong involvement of big pharma and other large entities.

IHI calls for 2024

IHI call 5 is a single-stage call with topics on the 3Rs, theranostics, stroke management and synthetic data. Deadline for full proposals: 16 January 2024.

Topic 1: Accelerating the implementation of New Approach Methodologies and other innovative non-animal approaches for the development, testing and production of health technologies.
Topic 2: Development and proof of principle of new clinical applications of theranostics solutions.
Topic 3: Improved prediction, detection, and treatment approaches for comprehensive stroke management.
Topic 4: Maximising the potential of synthetic data generation in healthcare applications.

Draft topics for IHI calls 6 and stage 7 have just been published (23rd of Oct). The text may change so the final call text should be checked before applying.

IHI call 6 (two-stage)

  • Support healthcare system resilience through a focus on persistency in the treatment of chronic diseases
  • Development of practical guidance and recommendations for using real world data/real world evidence in healthcare decision-making.

IHI call 7 (single-stage)

  • Improving clinical management of heart disease from early detection to treatment
  • User-centric technologies and optimised hospital workflows for a sustainable healthcare workforce
  • Clinical validation of biomarkers for diagnosis, monitoring disease progression and treatment response.
Indicative budget
  • The maximum financial contribution from IHI JU for these topics is 115 M€
  • Industry / contributing partner contributions: Applicant consortia should ensure that out of the total project budget, at least 45 % needs to be covered by contributions provided by project participants.
IHI’s working model

The total budget for IHI during 2021-2027 is 2.4 B€. 50% of the funding is provided by the European Union (1.2 B€ via the Horizon Europe Health Cluster) and the remaining funding comes from IHI industrial partners and other life science industries or associations that participate in the projects as contributing partners.

Key Digital Technologies (KDT) will become Chips Joint Undertaking (Chips JU)

The Key Digital Technologies Joint Undertaking - the Public-Private Partnership for research, development and innovation – funds projects for assuring world-class expertise in these key enabling technologies, essential for Europe's competitive leadership in the era of the digital economy. This includes developing advanced semiconductors and applications that are critical to European society and contribute to the EU digital strategy and the European Green Deal. KDT JU funded projects provide smart solutions for:

  • Mobility
  • Healthcare
  • The environment
  • Energy
  • A digital society
  • Manufacturing.

Any business or research organisation in the EU or in other countries associated to the Horizon Europe programme can participate in projects. The KDT consortia are typically very large with 40-50 partners and budgets of several millions of euros. The specific calls for 2024 have not yet been announced.

Your path to EU funding with Spinverse

Spinverse can help you in different ways if you are interested in EU funding not only in life science and health tech, but also within several other areas such as energy, manufacturing, smart cities & mobility, bioeconomy, ICT & electronics. Our services also include project management for those winning projects.  

  • Guidance in ideation & focus of the project scope to match the call needs.
  • Support in finding new partners with the right expertise to form a winning consortium.
  • Advice throughout the innovation value chain with call-specific details to enrich the value of the proposal.
  • Help to prepare a winning funding application.

Take the first step towards securing your EU funding: Reach out to Spinverse today and let us help you unlock the potential of your project.


Rohit Sood,
Director and Team Leader for Health Tech, Ph.D. (Chem), MBA
rohit.sood@spinverse.com
+358 50 530 2863 (Finland)


Tina Verolin,
Senior Consultant, Health
tina.verolin@spinverse.com 
m: +46-735097087 (Sweden)