The Innovative Health Initiative (IHI) has launched its first calls for proposals, contributing up to €157m in total to projects across the two calls.
The calls give organisations involved in health research and healthcare an opportunity to work together “to tackle some of the biggest challenges in health research today”.
With a total budget of €2.4bn, the IHI is a public-private partnership between the European Union (EU) and Europe’s life sciences industries aiming to translate health research and innovation into tangible benefits for patients and society.
In total, IHI will contribute up to €135m to projects funded under IHI call 1, a single-stage call with topics on cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and health data. At least 45% of each project’s budget in call 1 has to be met via contributions from IHI private partners and/or IHI contributing partners.
For IHI call 2, a two-stage call with topics on cardiovascular disease and early feasibility studies, the IHI contribution is around €22m, a figure that is matched by contributions committed by private and contributing partners.
Dr Pierre Meulien, IHI’s executive director, said: “These new calls for proposals are a fantastic opportunity for health researchers and stakeholders to work together on some of the most pressing issues in health research.”
There are a total of four topics included in call 1. The first topic aims to develop a clinical decision-support system to allow for a more holistic approach to the care of patients with a neurodegenerative disease plus another disease.
The second topic aims to provide early evidence of how next-generation imaging and image guided technologies can improve early diagnosis, treatment and follow-up of cancer patients when used as part of combined cancer therapies. The third aims to increase the therapeutic arsenal of multi-modal cancer treatments in a personalised approach.
The last topic included in call 1 aims to develop a platform for the seamless integration of data from a diverse range of sources to unlock the potential of health data to improve care and advance research.
Call 2 includes a total of two topics. The first aims to provide tools for the earlier identification of people at risk of cardiovascular diseases (CVD), earlier diagnosis and a more personalised approach to the treatment.
The final topic aims to increase the use of early feasibility studies – clinical studies of health technologies that are still in the very early stages of development – in the EU by delivering a tried and tested methodology including guidelines, templates, a stakeholder network and use cases to test the methodology.