Health industry welcomes EU draft proposal on innovation
Leaders across the health industry have welcomed a draft proposal made by the European Commission which looks at tackling some of the biggest threats to public health.
The European Commission's Innovative Health Initiative (IHI) was welcomed by pharmaceutical and medical technology organisations COCIR, EFPIA, EuropaBio, MedTech Europe and Vaccines Europe.
The draft proposal looks at a range of problems affecting innovation throughout healthcare within Europe. In particular, it highlights problem of collaboration between various sectors within life sciences, as well as the barriers to research and development. More so, it states that while Europe is generally well regarded for its research, sectors within the industry have a harder time translating that research into tangible products.
The future partnership hopes to demonstrate to researchers, patients, and citizens, that Europe has the ambition to be a world-leader in collaborative research and development. It sets out a number of objectives that can help create an EU-wide ecosystem designed to bring health innovations to market.
It sets out the need for the development of products that are focused on patients as well those needs currently unmet by current healthcare systems. It also sets out objectives to understand priority disease areas and examines how digital tools can be utilised for better disease diagnosis, prevention and treatment.
The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of working together to tackle global public health threats. By investing in collaborative research and development, both Europe’s health systems’ resilience and sustainability will be improved. Additionally, the needs of patients will be better addressed.
The Partnership Proposal details objectives and deliverables, as well as governance and the operational model. The document aims to provide an insight into topics which will be looked into further in the draft partnership legislation which is expected in Autumn 2020.
The new partnership will also aim to create synergies and complement other features of the European research landscape, in particular with the EU-Africa Global Health Partnership, potential co-funded partnerships on ‘Health and Care Systems Transformation’, the European Partnership for One Health/AMR and ‘Pandemic Preparedness and Societal Resilience’, and with the EU4Health Programme.