With Horizon 2020, also the successful Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) comes to an end. This initiative has resulted in large public-private alliances that aim to provide solutions for diseases with a high burden on patients and society. With the new Innovative Health Initiative (IHI), this programme will be strengthened and expanded.
More cross-sectoral collaboration
IMI was a public-private partnership between the European Commission and the pharmaceutical industry, represented by EFPIA. In IHI, this collaboration is expanded. It now includes digital, biological and medical technology (COCIR, EuropaBio and MedTech). Vaccines Europe will also be a separate collaboration partner contributing to the programme.
Strategic focus
The Innovative Health Initiative has 5 strategic objectives. First, it aims to contribute to a better understanding of the determinants of health and disease. Such understanding should contribute to prevention and early intervention. Second, it aims to enable joint development of tools, data, platforms, technologies and processes meeting the needs of end users. Third, it aims to demonstrate the feasibility of people-centred, integrated health care solutions. Fourth, it aims to exploit the full potential of digitalisation and data exchange in health care. Finally, it aims to enable the development of new and improved methods to assess the added value of innovative and integrated health care solutions.
Single-stage calls
Aside from the previously known 2-stage calls, where academic consortia are teamed up with private partners only after stage 1, the IHI programme also includes single stage calls. For such calls, public and private partners already collaborate from the start of the process and prepare a joint proposal for evaluation.
Want to know more?
Specific IHI calls but also draft texts for upcoming calls are frequently published on the IHI website, so keep an eye out. Have you spotted an interesting opportunity, or do you want to already start preparing based on a published draft? Let’s get in touch!
