The Innovative Health Initiative presents its objectives towards an integrated, digital and patient centred health system in its strategic R&I agenda.
At the end of June, the prospective member industry associations and the European Commission services presented a draft of the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) for the Innovative Health Initiative Joint Undertaking (IHI JU). This public-private partnership will be one out of ten institutionalised partnerships according to article 187 TFEU under Horizon Europe, and builds on the 12 years of research under the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), its predecessor under Horizon 2020.
The EU is strong in biomedical science and has world-leading healthcare systems; however, it is far from excellent with regard to translating research results into health products, services and prevention strategies. The IHI SRIA specifically aims at improving translation, and proposes at least 30 large-scale cross-sector health innovation projects in order to create an EU-wide ecosystem for the translation of health research into healthcare by 2030. In contrast to the pharma-led IMI, IHI includes members from beyond the pharmaceutical sector such as medical technology, diagnostics and digital health. It is therefore in a better position to address the entire European health industry with cross-sectoral integrated solutions and shift towards more digital and patient-centred innovations.
IHI will centre its activities on five objectives. First, IHI wants to contribute towards a better understanding of the determinants of health and priority disease areas. In an ideal case, this leads to patients benefiting from preventive treatment or early intervention due to early diagnosis and more cost-effective health care strategies. Second, IHI aims at integrating fragmented health R&I efforts bringing together health industry sectors and other stakeholders focusing on unmet public health needs. This shall enable the development of tools, data, platforms, technologies and processes for improved prediction, prevention, interception, diagnosis and management of diseases. The third objective lies on demonstrating the feasibility of people-centred, integrated health care solutions. Such solutions would result in a raised awareness of citizens and patients on their own role in managing their health and thus an improved patient adherence to prevention programmes and medical interventions. Fourth, IHI shall exploit the full potential of digitalisation and data exchange in health care. This will lead to a better insight into real life behaviour and challenges for patients with complex chronic diseases thanks to mobile health and e-health technologies as well as to the development of advanced analytics and artificial intelligence solutions for supporting clinical decisions and increased accuracy of diagnosis as a basis for a wider availability of personalised health interventions. Last, IHI wants to enable the development of new and improved methodologies and models for a comprehensive assessment of the value added of innovative and integrated health care solutions. To achieve these objectives, IHI will launch calls for proposals and select projects that contribute to one or more of them.
IHI will interact with a series of other health related initiatives. These include of course other partnerships in the Health Cluster of Horizon Europe such as the public-public European Partnership on Transforming Health and Care Systems, which may help to identify unmet public health needs. Beyond Horizon Europe, IHI will complement the actions of the new EU4Health Programme where relevant, and those of the Digital Europe Programme in the area of digital capacities and infrastructure related to health data. By supporting the development of innovations to prevent, faster diagnose and treat cancer, IHI will contribute to the Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan and the cancer mission under Horizon Europe. Last, IHI could also contribute to providing health data under the European Health Data Space (EHDS) by promoting the FAIR principles (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) and implementing EHDS policy standards and technical framework. In any case, if R&I activities fall in the scope of IHI as well as other EU-funded initiatives, calls will be launched only under the initiative having the most relevant scope and overall goal for the topic concerned.
The SRIA will reflect the final views of the European Commission, once it becomes a formal document of IHI JU upon finalisation and adoption by the IHI Governing Board. Before the start of IHI at the very end of 2021 or beginning of 2022, its legal base, which is part of a Single Basic Act covering nine of the Horizon Europe Joint Undertakings, will have to be adopted in a Council Decision. This will be the case under the Slovenian Presidency of the Council in autumn this year.