With a total of €2.1 billion it is one of the largest public funded initiatives for health worldwide. For the next seven years, the partners – which also include INSERM (France), Imperial College (UK), Roche, Siemens and Philips – will develop innovative products, education and services addressing the challenge of demographic change in Europe.
IBEC will play a key role in the project, as Barcelona has been selected as one of Innolife’s six co-location centres, serving as a regional cluster to bring together the partners of the KIC and ensure that its innovation potential is fully realised.
“Innolife’s goal is to promote entrepreneurship and develop innovations in healthy living and active ageing, providing Europe with new opportunities and resources by delivering products, services and concepts that will improve quality of life and contribute to the sustainability of healthcare across Europe,” said Dr. Ursula Redeker from Roche Diagnostics GmbH in Munich, the coordinating partner. “Our partners represent top excellence, and our activities will spread all over Europe. By 2018, we are aiming to create 70 start-ups per year and have a million students participating in our educational online programmes per year.”
IBEC Director Josep Samitier, who plays a leading role as executive committee member of the project, said: “We are thrilled to win the EIT’s call, which recognises our potential to provide the innovations needed to address critical healthcare challenges in today’s society. The EIT Health KIC is fully in line with IBEC’s dedication to combining frontier research with specific transfer targets to produce new applied technologies for the life and health sciences.”
The EIT’s first three KICs on climate change, ICT and sustainable energy – Climate-KIC, EIT ICT Labs and KIC InnoEnergy – were selected in 2009. The new KICs announced today, Innolife (@EIT_Health) and RawMatTERS (@EIT_RawMaterials), a consortium led by Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden Rossendorf, are expected to become fully operational after signing a seven-year Framework Partnership Agreement with the EIT in 2015. They will each receive a start-up grant of up to €4m.
IBEC in the Media: this news was covered in Diario Medico on 26th January.
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About EIT
The EIT is an independent EU body set up in 2008 to spur innovation and entrepreneurship across Europe to overcome some of its greatest challenges. It brings together leading universities, research labs and companies to form dynamic cross-border partnerships – Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) – that develop innovative products and services, start new companies, and train a new generation of entrepreneurs. The first three KICs on climate change, ICT and sustainable energy were selected in 2009. The EIT will launch the next call for KIC Proposals in 2016 focusing on Food4Future and Added-value Manufacturing, with a further call tentatively planned for 2018 addressing Urban Mobility.
www.eit.europa.eu
