IHI celebrates its first birthday and looks to the future
Posted on 30.11.2022
As we mark the Innovative Health Initiative’s first birthday on 30 November, we look back on what we have achieved so far, and offer a glimpse of our plans for the coming year.
On 30 November 2021, the legislation creating the Innovative Health Initiative came into force, marking the start of a new European partnership in health research and innovation.
A partnership between the EU and the European life science industries, represented by COCIR, EFPIA, EuropaBio, MedTech Europe, and Vaccines Europe, IHI is a true cross-sector, public-private partnership. Our core goals are to translate health research and innovation into tangible benefits for patients and society, and ensure that Europe remains at the cutting edge of interdisciplinary, sustainable, patient-centric health research.
In our first year, we have…
- Set up our three governance bodies – the Governing Board, the States Representatives Group, and (new in IHI) the Science and Innovation Panel
- Finalised and approved our Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda
- Launched our logo, website, newsletter, social media channels and other communications products and channels
- Launched our first two calls for proposals with six topics
- Run 10 events for stakeholders explaining IHI, our rules and procedures, and our call topics
- Launched our Ideas Incubator – a platform for you to submit your idea for an IHI call topic
- Put in place procedures and templates for organisations who want to join IHI as contributing partners
- Evaluated the proposals from our first calls for proposals
- Prepared and published the draft texts of 7 topics that will be launched across 2 calls in the next few weeks
- Continued to manage our Innovative Medicines Initiative projects and promote their successes
And we’re just getting started!
As we embark on our second year, we are already busy with the final preparations for our next calls for proposals and the launch of our first projects.
Setting up a new programme from scratch (while still running projects from past programmes) is far from easy. The fact that we have managed to achieve so much in our first year is testament to the hard work and dedication of the IHI team and the members of our governance bodies,’ said IHI’s interim Executive Director, Dr Hugh Laverty. ‘With more calls for proposals coming soon, I would encourage people to find out how they can join the IHI community and be part of IHI’s story in the years to come.