LifeTime Initiative
14h00 meeting Director-General of DG CONNECT Robert Viola / Brussels on LifeTime project/next generation FET Flagship Horizon Europe
ID: 204331434878-53
Lobbying Activity
Response to European Partnership for innovative health
27 Aug 2019
LifeTime strongly supports an institutional European Partnership on Innovative Health under Horizon Europe whose overall objective to facilitate technology convergence and understanding of diseases perfectly aligns with the vision of our initiative.
LifeTime (https://lifetime-fetflagship.eu/), a new pan-European consortium of >90 leading research institutions supported by over 70 companies, aims at revolutionising healthcare by mapping, understanding, and targeting human cells during disease. Following two competitive rounds of peer review, LifeTime has received 1M€ from the EC to translate its vision into a roadmap for Europe. It will develop and integrate several emerging disruptive technologies (single-cell multi-omics, advanced imaging, machine learning/AI, personalised disease models). LifeTime is committed to promote better research value in and for Europe to advance understanding and early diagnosis, interception, treatment of a wide range of diseases towards innovation and personalized medicine.
Therefore, we agree with the challenges described in the impact assessment and the analysis that improved collaboration between different public and private sectors is needed to address them. The proposed institutionalized partnership (Option 2, Art. 187) is best suited to secure long-term industry commitment from all sectors involved and promote close collaboration between public and private actors.
The inclusion of other industries beyond the pharmaceutical companies active in IMI is a pre-requisite for the success of the partnership. Companies of different size (start-ups, SMEs, large enterprises) and from various sectors (omics and the emergent single cell analysis sector including microfluidics, imaging, pharmaceuticals, biotech, diagnostics, IT/data science) need to join forces with academia across Europe to tackle the grand challenge to better understand disease mechanisms. The proposed partnership is more effective than normal calls with regard to the involvement/commitment of industrial partners, to improving their collaboration, creating new business models and improving industry competitiveness. With regard to better understanding of diseases and delivering clear impacts for the EU and its citizens, we would like to provide the following recommendations:
- Europe should be the partnership focus and benefit from non-European contributions should be carefully assessed. It is important to strengthen the European industry and competitiveness
-A proper governance model has to be established to enable multi-stakeholder collaboration which is crucial to foster therapeutic innovation. All actors with a stake in research, including regulators, payers, patient groups, industries and innovation bodies should be involved and connected with decision-makers at the EU and national levels in order to streamline and better coordinate research efforts across Europe. Allowing synergies with national programs and other funding streams of Horizon Europe is key
-The topic generation process should be more transparent and involved a broader range of partners compared to IMI. Academia which in many domains is at the forefront of breakthrough technological developments (e.g. single-cell technologies, organoids) with the potential to induce a paradigm shift in healthcare should definitely play a more significant role. Increased academia involvement will also enable strategic interfacing with key international initiatives led by academic institutions (e.g. Human Cell Atlas)
-With the involvement of new industry sectors with different business models and timelines of innovation pipelines, novel IPR frameworks should be developed, also in order to offer attractive opportunities for SMEs
Working closely with our industry partners on the LifeTime roadmap development, our consortium welcomes engagement with the EC and other stakeholders to further discuss the potential scope and features of a European Partnership on Innovative Health.
Read full responseMeeting with Roberto Viola (Director-General Communications Networks, Content and Technology)
3 Jul 2019 · LifeTime project/next generation FET Flagship