The Innovative Health Initiative (IHI) is a public-private partnership (PPP) with a total budget of €2.4 billion funded jointly by the European Union and industry associations representing Europe's life science industries. IHI has launched a new call for proposals including topics on heart disease in cities, big data and arthritis, regulatory sandboxes, and how best to measure the impacts of a therapy on patients' lives.

Call 8 has a maximum financial contribution from IHI JU of €47.55 million and consists of the following topics:

1. A City-Based Approach to Reducing Cardiovascular Mortality in Europe: The focus of this topic is on identifying and creating scalable models, interventions, and practices to enhance the overall efficiency and effectiveness of CVD management based on existing (e.g. Cardio4Cities) or new pilots in up to 5 cities, to build evidence for replication across Europe in different socio-economic conditions. These pilots should propose a good coverage of different locations and contexts in Europe and deliver scalable solutions that can be applied to other cities.
   The action funded under this topic will consider primary and secondary prevention strategies, early detection, timely diagnosis and treatment (healthcare delivery), lifestyle changes (personal responsibility), and living environment (community responsibility).
2. Novel Endpoints for Osteoarthritis (OA) by Applying Big Data Analytics: The overall aim of this topic is to build a public-private partnership that is able to integrate and leverage the plethora of existing and currently collected data on OA, as well as the increasing insights and expertise gathered over decades of research. Further, the goal is to use a data driven approach to significantly progress the field by leveraging the novel opportunities that have emerged thanks to increased computing power and innovative methodologies in big data analysis, in order to:
   1) integrate different perspectives to improve the understanding of osteoarthritis as a complex disease;
   2) foster progress towards regulatory validation of patient-relevant endpoints to measure and predict OA disease progression as well as alternative endpoints to measure response to treatment;
   3) allow predictive modelling while actively seeking feedback to incorporate the perception of patients, care givers, primary care physicians and regulators.
3. Modelling Regulatory Sandbox Mechanisms and Enabling Their Deployment to Support Breakthrough Innovation: The overall aim of this IHI topic is to contribute to the progression and successful implementation of regulatory sandboxes for healthcare innovations by developing a comprehensive and shared understanding of their value and process of implementation. The topic should also enable the development of a cross-sectoral community of stakeholders including pharma and medical device companies, regulators, and health technology assessment bodies (HTAs), among other stakeholders.
4. Establishing novel approaches to improve clinical trials for rare and ultra-rare diseases: The topic aims to develop a unified framework and consensus-based recommendations for using multiple types of patient-centred information to support the use of DHT-derived endpoints to demonstrate therapeutic benefit. This will ensure that therapies addressing patients' needs are approved for use and reimbursed at levels that reflect the value of the therapies to patients.

Key dates and deadlines

• Draft topic texts published: 29 April 2024, updated 5 June 2024.
• Call launch: 25 June 2024
• Short proposal submission deadline: 10 October 2024 at 17:00 Brussels time
• Full proposal submission deadline: 23 April 2025 at 17:00 Brussels time

Any organisation established in the EU or a country associated to Horizon Europe is eligible to receive IHI funding. In practice, IHI funding primarily supports the participation in its projects of organisations like universities, research organisations, patient organisations, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and mid-sized companies. Depending on the type of call for proposals, larger companies may also be eligible to receive IHI funding.

Details of who can receive funding is defined in indvidual call texts.

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