User-centric technologies and optimized hospital workflows for a sustainable healthcare workforce
Programme Category
Programme Name
Programme Description
IHI JU is based on the idea that interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration will enable perspective and breakthrough innovations in healthcare, including the pharmaceutical industry but also new fields such as biopharmaceuticals, medical technologies and biotechnologies.
Identifier Code
Call
Summary
Technical and data-driven solutions have the potential to support the healthcare workforce, but their adoption has faced many challenges. While AI solutions have been proposed to support clinical decision making, operational optimization, patient empowerment, healthy lifestyle maintenance and population health management, they require further testing and validation.
Projects funded under this theme should develop or improve innovative medical technology solutions. Better integration of existing solutions and emerging technologies into (optimized) hospital workflows will improve treatment outcomes, ease workloads and maintain job satisfaction. Through collaborative design approaches that incorporate end-user feedback, solutions should aim to be ready for integration into real-world hospital environments. Overall, this theme focuses on user-centric technologies and optimized hospital workflows for a sustainable healthcare workforce.
Detailed Call Description
To achieve the aim, applicants must assemble a public-private partnership to ensure successful co-creation of the proposed solution(s), with input of all relevant stakeholders including healthcare professionals and patients, focusing on the following activities.
- Develop and implement solutions to empower the healthcare workforce (for example in diagnostics, management and organisation, planning, delivery of complex interventions, etc.), by supporting and assisting them without introducing additional burdens.
- Propose solutions (up to a prototype level) that may relate either to the automation of existing workflows, or the adoption and the integration of new capacities and/or the development of trustworthy and autonomous technologies or technology (AI)1 experiences.
- These solutions should be data-driven, aiming to improve workflows and assist clinical procedures and/or hospital processes, supporting in planning and creating a more efficient and balanced supply and demand between patient load and staff competencies and healthcare resource consumption.
- Applicants should take into consideration standardised approaches to data acquisition to allow proper development/training of the technologies.
- Propose and implement a strategy for better integration of existing and/or emerging technologies in different hospital workflows. This may include an analysis of the most critical processes running in hospitals, technological gaps within the hospital environment, ways to optimise workflow(s), and a roadmap of how the proposed technologies can grow, adapt, and innovate to meet the future needs of a healthcare system and its staff.
- Demonstrate potential for deployment through use cases that address wide user groups involving all relevant medical staff categories (nurses, medical staff, specialists, managers, etc.).
- Establish effective training approaches for complex technologies to minimise user burden and operator error, and/or to improve patient outcomes.
- Convincingly demonstrate the scalability and transferability of the approaches across different healthcare professions and different levels of care.
- Demonstrate the feasibility and desirability of the proposed approach(es) or technologies from an economic perspective, analysing the potential impact on patient and staff costs in healthcare institutions, on payers and insurers, and on the healthcare system. Applicants should consider relevant strategies to drive end-user and organisation-wide adoption.
- Where relevant, the proposed solutions should aim at developing and applying relevant standards (e.g. Fast Health Interoperability Resources (FHIR), Health Level Seven International (HL7), Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE), Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes (LOINC), Systemized Nomenclature of Medicine – Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT), Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN)) and ensuring the potential for regulatory approval, taking into consideration the different national regulatory requirements to ensure future implementation in the target markets.
- If relevant, applicants should take into account other dimensions with regulatory implications (for example the prevention and management of shortages, implementation of risk minimisation measures following regulatory decisions, the incorporation of clinical trial design requirements, and collecting real world data (RWD) for regulatory purposes).
- Where applicable, applicants should ensure the proposed solutions take into consideration supporting the secondary use of data generated for research, including by regulators.
- Applicants should also learn from past EU-funded projects (via mapping exercises and desk reviews) and reserve resources to synergise with other relevant ongoing initiatives.
Call Total Budget
Financing percentage by EU or other bodies / Level of Subsidy or Loan
Expected contribution per project: €12.500.000
Thematic Categories
- Health
- Research, Technological Development and Innovation
Eligibility for Participation
- Central Government
- International Organisations
- Large Enterprises
- Legal Entities
- Other Beneficiaries
- Private Bodies
- Researchers/Research Centers/Institutions
- State-owned Enterprises
Eligibility For Participation Notes
ENTITIES ELIGIBLE FOR FUNDING
The following provisions shall apply:
- Legal entities identified in the topic text of the call for proposals shall not be eligible for funding from IHI JU. Nevertheless:
- These entities will be entitled to provide contributions as IHI JU members other than Union or contributing partners or as constituent or affiliated entities of either.
- Legal entities participating in indirect actions selected under this type of calls for proposals shall not be eligible for funding where:
(a) they are for-profit legal entities with an annual turnover of EUR 500 million or more;
(b) they are under the direct or indirect control of a legal entity described in point (a), or under the
same direct or indirect control as a legal entity described in point (a);
(c) they are directly or indirectly controlling a legal entity referred to in point (a).
The following additional condition applies:
- The applicants which are IHI JU members other than the Union, or their constituent entities and
- affiliated entities, and contributing partners and that are pre-identified in the topics – under the section ‘Industry consortium’ – of a call for proposals shall not apply at the first stage of the call. The applicant consortium selected at the first stage shall, in preparation for the proposal submission at the second stage, merge with the pre-identified industry consortium.
In addition, in line with Articles 11 and 119(1) and (3) of the Council Regulation (EU) 2021/2085, legal entities providing in-kind contributions as constituent entities or affiliated entities of IHI JU private members or as contributing partners that are:
- Not eligible for funding in two-stage calls for proposals; or
- Not established in a country generally eligible for funding in accordance with Part B of the General Annexes to the Horizon Europe Work Programme 2023 – 2024, may exceptionally sign the grant agreement.
This is subject to the following conditions:
- Their participation is considered essential for implementing the action by the granting authority; and
- They participate without requesting any funding.
The essentiality of non-EU legal entities for implementing the action shall be ascertained by the granting authority.
Call Opening Date
Call Closing Date
EU Contact Point
All the questions pertaining to the IHI JU Calls are to be addressed to infodesk@ihi.europa.eu.