Introduction

EIT Health and EIT Digital have united in a Cross-KIC activity "Combating Child Obesity", to help bring to market innovations that address one of the primary health challenges of the 21st century.

Project description

Partners from EIT Health and EIT Digital are therefore invited to express their interest in participating by submitting proposals for contributions to this activity, whose purpose is to launch a new startup for Combating Child Obesity.

Within the context of this call, individual partners or groups of partners may submit contributions in the form of:

-specific assets offered – such as technology, prototyping and analysis labs; access to users and cohorts of patients;
-expertise – such as clinical expertise, data architecture platform expertise, product or solution design, etc.;
-actual technology, products and services.

Partnsership composition

Applications offering contributions from teams of partners are recommended to have a limited number of partners with a good balance between EIT Digital and EIT Health. EIT Digital and EIT Health will complete the activity by hiring a “Venture Creation Lead”, located in either the French or Dutch Co-Location Centre. The EIT KICs will also hire two graduates, possibly from EIT Digital / EIT Health Master Schools to complete the team. The corresponding budget will be allocated within the activity.

Teams of Partners should propose engaged and entrepreneurial members of the venture according to the categories provided below. Individual Partners are required to indicate the category they belong to.

Business Champion(s)

The Business Champion needs to commit to the go-to-market in the proposal, based on technologies and validated research results provided by the technology provider. This/these key partner(s) will be selected based on the criteria and requirements below. It will need to be influent in the relevant clinical and business areas and help the team to:

-Define go to market strategy
-Setup Business Model
-Support and advertise beta test
-Bring a selection of users
-Specify, detect and acquire customers who will use the product or service created by the startup since the first year of activity

Technology Provider(s)

This/these partner(s) will help the team with the digital activities to setup the solution which can include for example, but not limited to, the platform, connected devices, mobile app & first plugin. The diversity of requirements will end up in multiple partners from academy or industry. We are looking for the following skills and expertise:

-User Interface design /User experience experts with a gamification specialty
-AI specialist (experience in healthcare appreciated)
-Cloud service developers with DevOps (development and operations) expertise
-Health tracking device manufacturer

Child Obesity Specialist(s)

This/these partner(s) can be from the academic sector or a healthcare provider and will help the team with the health and clinical activities which can include for example, but not limited to:

-Clinically validate the solution
-Define protocol(s)
-Setup success metrics
-Define recommendations and coaching approach
-Act as scientific advisor, bring seal of trust

Pilot Customer(s)

Pilot customer(s) for testing the solution may be included in the venture team or can be involved as subcontractor(s) and receive limited financial support. In the latter case, Partners need to plan for the adequate budget for sub-contracting

Sustainability

The Cross-KIC activity “Combating Child Obesity” will create a startup as innovation vehicle, in which, as part of the EIT sustainability strategy, the EIT KICs receive an equity share. The expected equity level to be attributed to the two KICstogetheris 0.5 x EIT financial contribution /KAVA.

Budget

-This is a 3 year gated programme. The EIT financial support for the activity will be €1M for the year 2020. Assuming annual confirmation of the EU Commission financial support to the KICs for the years 2021 and 2022, EIT financial support will be available to the activity for the year 2021 and 2022.
-The team of Partners will collectively be expected to provide between 25% (333K€) and 50% (1M€) of the total activity KAVA budget as co-funding.
-As for all KIC activities, Partners will also be asked to include KIC Complementary Activities (KCA) in their budget to achieve a ratio of EIT Funding/(KCA+KAVA) below 15%.
-A budget of 200k€ in EIT financial support must be allocated in the activity budget for the Venture Creation Lead and two graduates from EIT Digital / EIT Health Master Schools.

Application Process

EIT Digital and EIT Health are partnership organisations. This means that proposers are expected to be existing Partners of EIT Digital and/or EIT Health . The cross-KIC innovation activity is envisaged in the French and Dutch Co-Location Centres of EIT Health and EIT Digital. There are three main steps in the process starting from the proposal submission:

-Submission: Teams of Partners and individual Partners submit their complete applications by email to cfe_cco@eitdigital.eu, taking into account the guidelines provided in this document. Deadline:,December 4th 2019 at 17.00 CET. This is a hard deadline and no extension will be granted. Late or incomplete applications will not be eligible for evaluation.
-Experts Review: Submitted contributions are reviewed by a panel of internal and external experts that will compose the activity based on selected contributions.
-MCs Decision Gate: The MCs of EIT Digital and EIT Health will assess the Experts Review recommendations. The MCs reserve the right not to proceed with the activity, should it not be of sufficient quality. The outcome of the evaluation process will be communicated by 16 December 2019 and will be considered final.

The activity will officially start Jan 1, 2020 and will end on Dec 31, 2020. Six months after the beginning of the activity, the startup needs to be created.

More information

https://www.eithealth.eu/-/eit-digital-eit-health-call-for-expression-of-interest-2019-to-construct-a-cross-kic-innovation-activity-on-combating-child-obesity