“Transforming Healthcare by bringing together diverse sectors” is the key challenge that the Innovative Health Initiative (IHI) aims to address to build a strong society. Digital technologies in mental health care, advanced therapies for rare diseases, and improving hospital care are among the topics underlined in for IHI’s forthcoming calls in 2023. As the healthcare systems are under more pressure than ever and many diseases still lack effective treatments, there is an urgent need for more innovative and integrated approaches.
Industry associations representing IHI are COCIR (medical imaging, radiotherapy, Digital health and electromedical industries); European federation of pharmaceutical industries and associations (EFPIA), Vaccines Europe (pharmaceutical industry and vaccine industry); EuropaBio (biotechnology industry); and MedTech Europe (medical technology industry).
What is Innovative Health Initiative (IHI)?
IHI is a public-private partnership (PPP) between the European Union and the European life science industries, which forms the Governing Board. IHI funds ambitious projects that address defined challenges (see below) and consist of several European partners. Industry associations representing IHI adopted the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) in January 2022. The SRIA and IHI work together to launch calls for proposals and select projects (actions) that contribute to reaching one or more of the objectives outlined in the SRIA.
What will be funded in 2023?
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. Screening platforms, biomarkers for prediction, clinical decision support tools, advanced medicinal products for rare diseases and digital health technologies for personalized management of mental disorders will be the main focus for single-stage calls in 2023. The 2-stage calls mainly focus on the nonclinical drug safety assessment and decentralized clinical trials.
IHI single-stage calls for 2023
- Topic 1: Screening platform and biomarkers for prediction and prevention of diseases of unmet public health need
- Topic 2: Patient generated evidence to improve outcomes, support decision making, and accelerate innovation
- Topic 3: Combining hospital interventional approaches to improve patient outcomes and increase hospital efficiencies
- Topic 4: Strengthening the European ecosystem for Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMPs) and other innovative therapeutic modalities for rare diseases
- Topic 5: Digital health technologies for the prevention and personalised management of mental disorders and their long-term health consequences.
IHI 2-stage calls for 2023
- Topic 1: Expanding translational knowledge in minipigs: a path to reduce and replace non-human primates in non-clinical drug safety assessment
- Topic 2: Patient-centric blood sample collection to enable decentralised clinical trials and improve access to healthcare.
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.
The IHI Programme Office is planning webinars, and brokerage and pitching opportunities around the time of the call launches (Q4/2022) to help applicants understand the topics, learn about IHI’s rules and procedures, and network with potential project partners.
Estimated timeline for IHI calls
The draft IHI topics for 2023 have just been launched in October 2022. Currently, the draft topics are under consultation with IHI’s States Representatives Group and Science and Innovation Panel. Applicants should also check the final, approved topic texts once the calls are officially launched (tentatively in December2022/January2023).
For single-stage IHI calls, deadlines will most likely be in spring 2023. Evaluation outcome communication is expected by the end of August 2023.
For 2-stage IHI calls, Stage 1 deadline will most likely be in late spring 2023 and evaluation results from Stage 1 are expected during Summer 2023. For each topic, the top-ranked consortium will be invited to link up with the industry consortium described in the topic text to submit a full proposal. The tentative deadline for submission of a full Stage 2 proposal will be in autumn 2023.
How can Spinverse help you succeed?
If your research is relevant to any of the areas mentioned above, please do not hesitate to contact Spinverse. We at Spinverse with competencies within medical sector, life sciences, Imaging & Sensors and Digital Health can understand your needs and can provide you with
- Guidance in ideation & focus of the project scope to fit the call needs
- Co-ideate project concept with consortium partners
- Support in finding new partners with the right expertise to form the consortium
- Advise throughout the innovation value chain with call-specific details to enrich the value of the proposal
- Help to prepare a winning funding application
- Securing success in funding applications.
Upcoming agenda: To release the updated info about the calls and to stimulate the set-up of consortia, the IHI is organising a kick-off and brokerage event tentatively in Q4/2022 with dedicated networking sessions and providing networking platforms where different stakeholders can interact.
Got interested? Please contact Rohit Sood, Director and Team Leader of Health Technologies, for further information and discussion.
More information:
IHI Europe
COCIR
European federation of pharmaceutical industries and associations (EFPIA)
Vaccines Europe
EuropaBio
MedTech Europe