The Commission launched a new call for advanced health approaches to rapidly respond to COVID-19

On 19 May the European Commission launched a new call for an Expression of Interest with a budget of €56 million for advanced health approaches to rapidly respond to COVID-19 and to deliver results for a higher level of preparedness of health systems.

The call implements Action 3 of the ERAvsCorona Action Plan, which resulted from dialogues between the Commission services and the national Ministries over the period March-April 2020.

The focus of the Commission’s call is not to develop new diagnostics, therapeutics or vaccine compounds or solutions, but rather to complete and deploy readily available solutions to increase the EU response capabilities to this coronavirus crisis, improve the recovery, and better prepare for future such crises or waves.

The call for expression of interest covers five focus topics:

1. Repurposing of manufacturing for vital medical supplies and equipment;
2. Medical technologies, Digital tools and Artificial Intelligence analytics to improve surveillance and care at high Technology Readiness Levels;
3. Behavioural, social and economic impacts of the outbreak response;
4. Pan-European COVID-19 cohorts;
5. Networking of existing EU and international cohorts of relevance to COVID- 19.

By this call for an Expression of Interest the Commission wants to support initiative solutions, such as computer modelling and simulation tools developed by Avicenna Members to enhance the protection of healthcare practitioners and the general public.

This initiative is part of a larger Call for Expression of Interest with a total budget of €122 million mobilised from European Commission’s research and innovation programme, Horizon 2020, for urgently needed actions to tackle the coronavirus.

Stakeholders interested in this call for expression of interest please have a look here for more information. Submissions should be submitted at the latest by 11 June 2020 - 5.00 pm (CET)!