Brussels, 19 November 2021. The health industry associations representing pharmaceutical, medical technology, and digital health technology companies (COCIR, EFPIA, EuropaBio, MedTech Europe and Vaccines Europe) welcome the adoption of the Single Basic Act establishing the Joint Undertakings under Horizon Europe.

Among the ten Joint Undertakings, the Innovative Health Initiative is a unique cross-sectoral initiative aiming at strengthening Europe’s position at the forefront of health innovation by bringing together public and private knowledge, resources and experts. In this context, partners from academia, patient and healthcare professional organisations, regulators, small and large companies will pioneer the patient-centred integration of knowledge, technology and products covering each and every aspect of care to improve patients’ lives across Europe and beyond.

IHI is following the Innovative Medicines Initiative. Based on a thorough evaluation of the lessons learned, the new partnership builds on the successes of IMI, by introducing a broader scope of the partnership and covering all stages of the continuum of care. In particular, the most important changes from IMI are:

• Extension of the private partners to the medical, digital health, and bio-technology industries to reflect a cross-sectorial approach to health research & innovation;
• Creation of the Science & Innovation Panel to facilitate co-creation of scientific priorities and call topics with all relevant stakeholders in the healthcare eco-system;
• Introduction of a mix of call types to respond flexibly to scientific challenges;
• Extension of the IMI ‘Associate Partners’ concept to all Joint Undertakings as Contributing Partners continues to allow open projects and the contribution of organisations that are not members of the partner associations.

The future private members will now evaluate the legislation before making their final commitment to the partnership. Pending that commitment, the first call for project proposals is expected to be launched in 2022.

More information on the Innovative Health Initiative:

- Health industry associations website.

- European Commission’s website.

- IMI website – IHI webpage.