Following the success of its first call in June, the European Commission’s Innovative Health Initiative (IHI) is launching its second round of calls for proposals! Informative webinars and other events will be scheduled to inform interested partners about the final topics and rules for applying.

The following draft topics have not yet been approved by the IHI Governing Board, but their announcement is intended to allow potential partners to build a consortium and draft a proposal.

Draft proposals of Call 3 currently include single-stage topics on:

• Screening platform and biomarkers for prediction and prevention of diseases of unmet public health need
• Patient-generated evidence to improve outcomes, support decision making, and accelerate innovation
• Combining hospital interventional approaches to improve patient outcomes and increase hospital efficiencies
• Strengthening the European ecosystem for Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMPs) and other innovative therapeutic modalities for rare diseases
• Digital health technologies for the prevention and personalised management of mental disorders and their long-term health consequences

And Call 4 asks for two-stage topics on:

• Expanding translational knowledge in minipigs: a path to reduce and replace non-human primates in non-clinical drug safety assessment
• Patient-centric blood sample collection to enable decentralised clinical trials and improve access to healthcare

EIBIR will disseminate more information about the final IHI calls and associated events as it becomes available.

With the tender beginning this month, the 10 members of the i-Violin consortium held on September 21 and 22 in Vienna their Kick-Off Meeting before representatives of the European Commmission’s DG ENER and HaDEA, the European Health and Digital Executive Agency. The consortium presented an overview of the project and the workplan for all seven work packages, receiving feedback and an outlook on cooperation with the EC, project officer and SAMIRA Steering Group on Quality and Safety.

The i-Violin project, standing for “implementing verifiable oncological imaging by quality assurance and optimisation,” aims to satisfy the clearly identified need to optimise and harmonise oncological imaging procedures in Europe and ensure their broad adoption. The current disparities in oncological imaging procedures in Europe, which i-Violin can address at the transnational level to improve cancer care for Europe’s patients, are evident from several recent projects and surveys conducted by the EuroSafe Imaging campaign. i-Violin will contribute to establishing a harmonised and standardised oncological imaging approach focusing on the chest, abdomen and pelvis, and a targeted education and training programme for radiologists, radiographers and medical physicists will accompany dissemination and foster uptake. As Scientific Coordinator Prof. Christoph Hoeschen (Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, DE) explained, dissemination will be essential to ensure implementation of the new tools and optimised procedures. The EC looks forward to the results of this project as a promising opportunity to advance cancer care under the EU4Health Programme.

On 1 September 2022, i-Violin a 24-month project co-funded by the EU under the EU4Health programme 2021-2027 was officially launched. The project brings together 10 partners from 9 countries and aims to improve optimisation and harmonisation of oncological imaging procedures in Europe and to ensure their broad adoption to improve the quality and safety of cancer care for Europe’s patients.

Several ongoing projects and recent surveys have demonstrated disparities in oncological imaging procedures across Europe. Furthermore, they have also advanced the understanding of imaging and their effects, on which i-Violin will build upon; mainly the Horizon 2020 MEDIRAD project (no. 755523, website) completed in February 2022 and the ongoing SINFONIA project (no. 945196, website), both related to dose determination in three-dimensional imaging as well as image quality assessment.

During the Kick-Off meeting of September 19 and 20 in Vienna and online, the consortium will present its objectives and workplan to the European Commission and receive their feedback as the tasks get underway. Each work package will be detailed, and an overall project timeline will be negotiated. This is a tremendous opportunity for the visibility of the project and its work.

Read more about the project and its objectives here.

The Innovative Health Initiative (IHI), founded by the European Commission (EC), is launching its first calls for proposals! To kick start the initiative, there’ll be a free of charge event on 14 June 2022.

The one-day hybrid kick-off and brokerage event will consist of open discussions and give you a chance to build networks. With two sessions planned for the day, the first will present the content of the upcoming calls and highlight the rules for participation. The second will follow with information on forming consortia and give you a chance to make elevator pitches on proposals.

EIBIR encourages our community members to attend the event and learn more about the initiative. We will for sure be attending!

Alongside the kick-off event, IHI has also organised a series of webinars from 10 to 23 June on the rules and procedures of application and the different eligible funding topics.

Proposal Call 1 will include single-stage topics on:

• Next generation imaging and image-guided diagnosis and therapy for cancer
• Access and integration of heterogeneous health data for improved health care in diseases areas of high unmet public health need
• Personalised oncology: Innovative people-centred, multi-modal therapies against cancer
• An innovative decision-support system for improved care pathways for patients with neurodegenerative diseases and comorbidities

And Call 2 asks for two-stage topics on:

• Cardiovascular diseases – improved prediction, prevention, diagnosis and monitoring
• Setting a harmonised methodology to promote uptake of early feasibility studies for clinical and innovation excellence in the European Union

There’ll be a webinar session on each of these calls and topics, so please be sure to register and gain all the necessary input to have the best chances of creating a winning proposal! Further information and links to registration are available here.

The Innovative Health Initiative (IHI) is a new EU funding stream that builds on the experience of the previous Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), the public-private partnership programme for medicines, but has been broadened to include medical technology.

IHI aims to “help create an EU-wide health research and innovation ecosystem that facilitates the translation of scientific knowledge into tangible innovations. These innovations should be safe, effective, people-centred and cost-effective, and cover prevention, diagnostics, treatment and disease management.”

The ESR and EIBIR have worked closely with COCIR to provide input to the development of the funding scheme and potential topics for imaging.

Notably, the first tentative call outlines include topics highly relevant to imaging.

On 24 January 2022, the IHI launched an open call for experts for its new Science and Innovation Panel (SIP). The panel will play an important role in setting IHI’s priorities and designing calls for proposals.

Interested experts who want to apply to be part of the panel in one of these roles should submit an expression of interest by 21 February 2022. For more information, click here

We encourage expert to apply and help guide the initial phase of IHI.

Euro-BioImaging and the Euro-BioImaging Industry Board are pleased to announce that the next special edition of the Virtual Pub will take place on December 10, 2021. In line with the season, we will focus on the theme of “COLD” in imaging.

We are inviting abstracts for 5 minute Flash talks about any topic related to “COLD” in imaging. Be creative! Possible interpretations of “COLD” include:

• Biology of the cold – from cold receptors and arctic organisms to brain reactions to cold and infections with common cold viruses
• Cold-related metabolism including fat metabolism
• Cold technologies – from cooling and freezing samples to low-temperature and cryo-imaging techniques
• Keeping your sample or equipment cool – from reducing laser output and keeping high-power magnetic coils cool to incubating your sample at controlled low temperatures
• Cold isotopes in molecular imaging

Please submit your abstract by November 22!

Prizes will be awarded to all speakers!

For more information, click the link.

The SOLUS projects invites everyone to an online end user workshop about its multimodal system for better diagnosis of breast cancer on December 3rd from 14:00 – 18:00 CET.