Partnerships

Innovative Health Initiative

Innovative Health Initiative

Partnership website: https://www.ihi.europa.eu/

The partnership kicked off in November 2021. It's core goals are to translate health research and innovation into tangible benefits for patients and society, and ensure that Europe remains at the cutting edge of interdisciplinary, sustainable, patient-centric health research.

The Innovative Health Initiative (IHI) is a partnership between the European Union and industry associations representing the sectors involved in healthcare, namely COCIR (medical imaging, radiotherapy, health ICT and electromedical industries); EFPIA, including Vaccines Europe (pharmaceutical industry and vaccine industry); EuropaBio (biotechnology industry); and MedTech Europe (medical technology industry).

IHI is the successor of the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), the world’s largest public-private collaboration in life sciences.

Objectives

The partnership intends to

  • help create an EU-wide health research and innovation ecosystem that facilitates translation of scientific knowledge into innovations
  • foster the development of safe, effective, people-centred and cost-effective innovations that respond to strategic unmet public health needs
  • drive cross-sectoral health innovation for a globally competitive European health industry.

It will cover the entire continuum of care, from prevention and diagnostics to treatment and disease management. 

Participation Flanders

The following organisations based in Flanders are partner in ongoing IHI projects (2022 calls):

  • ICOMETROX NV in the project 'CLAIMS'
  • Janssen Pharmaceutica nv in the project 'IMAGIO' & 'IDERHA
  • The European Institute for Innovation through Health Data (I-HD) in 'IDERHA'
  • Q1.6 bv in 'IDHERA'
  • Johnson & Johnson Medical nv in 'IDHERA'

Governance of IHI: The IHI States Representatives Group consists of representatives of the EU Member States & countries associated to Horizon Europe. The group is consulted on a range of issues, including the draft call topics. In this group, the Flemish government is represented by Kathleen D'Hondt. 

Past & current calls for proposals

Since it took off in 2021, IHI has launched several calls of proposals. Information on topics that are in the pipeline can be found on IHI's 'future opportunities' webpage. Information on calls that are currently open can be found on IHI's open calls webpage.

Currently, IHI call 11 is open for submission:

  • IHI call 11, a two-stage call with 5 call topics and deadline to submit short proposals on 9 October 17:00 Brussels time

All IHI calls for proposals are also published on the European Commission’s Funding & Tenders Portal. Find out more on how IHI call topics are generated here.

Key documents

Contact

Innovative Health Initiative contact page Contact | IHI Innovative Health Initiative (europa.eu) or infodesk@ihi.europa.eu

What are partnerships?

Partnerships group the EC and private and/or public partners, to coordinate and streamline the research & innovation initiatives and funding in some selected key domains.

How to use partnerships?

  • orientation
    Partnerships publish strategic documents, e.g. outlining the main research and innovation challenges or key focus points.
  • networking
    Partnerships often organise events, such as info days, brokerage events, etc. Meet potential partners and learn about the nuances that are not visible in the official documents.
  • ecosystem analysis
    Partnerships typically have an advisory board, and publish impact studies of previous actions. These are good sources of information to uncover the main R&D&I players in the domain.
  • steering the agenda
    Partnerships collaborate with the EC on outlining the strategy and the future funding opportunities in their domain, based on input from industry, academia, and other stakeholders.

Testimonial

image of Miricle - Mine Risk Clearance for Europe

Miricle - Mine Risk Clearance for Europe

The Miricle project, ‘Mine Risk Clearance for Europe’, obtained funding under the European Defence Industrial Development programme call ‘Underwater control contributing to resilience at sea’. The main objective of the project was to achieve a European and sovereign capacity in future mine warfare and create a path for the next generation ‘made in Europe’ countermeasure solutions. In order to realise this objective, Miricle addressed various stages: studies, design, prototyping and testing. These stages inter alia included the successful testing of an XL Unmanned Underwater Vehicle, a protototyped mine disposal system and multiple innovative systems to detect buried mines. Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ), was one of the five Belgian partners in the consortium. Within the project, VLIZ was able to forward its research on the acoustic imaging of the seabed to spatially map and visualize buried structures and objects - in this case buried mines - in the highest possible detail. VLIZ also led the work on ‘Port and Offshore Testing’, building on the expertise of the institute in the field of marine operations and technology.