The EU seeks to boost investment support for health-sector innovators through a new public-private partnership.
EIT Health and the European Investment Fund (EIF) have set up the Venture Centre of Excellence (VCoE), to which the European Commission (EC) has announced its financial support. The VCoE is a public-private co-investment programme to support European health start-ups in scaling up their innovations. The contribution of €150m will be funded through the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI). This amount will serve as an anchor investment, intended to attract further private investors from the pharma and med-tech industry. It is expected to ultimately mobilise €2bn of investments in the European life science industry.
EIT Healthis a network of “world leading health innovators”. With approximately 150 partner organisations, the network is working across borders to answer the biggest health challenges in Europe. The network belongs to the EU funded European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), composed of eight such sectoral networks. EIT Health supports innovation by bringing various stakeholders from start-ups and SMEs to health researchers together. With the headquarter in Munich and six regional Innovation Hubs and InnoStars clusters across 13 European countries, EIT Health creates an ecosystem in which entrepreneurs, innovative technologies and investors can meet.
VCoE is an open innovation platform in the life science sector, which aims to boost collaboration and investments in “highly innovative digital health and life science start-ups”. The programme wants to foster the life science ecosystem by supporting “breakthrough technologies” and ensuring that products and services are commercialised and scaled up in Europe. The Centre facilitates connections by bringing programme members together at exclusive member events on a bi-annual basis, to promote long-term relationship building and the sharing of market insights, thereby breaking down silos.
In addition, programme members will be able to use a suite of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools in order to amplify their scouting, sourcing and syndication operations. The custom-built AI platform will allow creation of syndication scenarios of start-ups that are of interest for members, based on confidentially-set parameters.
This initiative comes as the EIT announces its EIT Award nominees for 2020, including three Swiss companies. The categories, representing the driving dynamics of entrepreneurship in Europe, include the Change Award, the Innovators Award, the Venture Award and the Woman Entrepreneur Award.