SAPHIRE or the consortium for Securing Adoption of Personalised Health in REgions: The consortium eSAPHIRE or the consortium for Securing Adoption of Personalised Health in REgions: The consortium engages to help structuring the application of personalised medicine (PM) at regional level and contribute to the implementation and reach of the International Consortium on Personalised Medicine (ICPerMed) to develop its roadmap and Action Plan, while taken regional specific needs into account. Efforts will be taken to express the regional voice within ICPerMed. The activities will include the establishment and support of networking between regions and interregional cooperation, and in particular linking remote or sparsely populated regions with regions harbouring critical mass of medical and PM expertise, while taking into account broader socio-economic and cultural aspects. The network will cover regional policy and decision makers, opinion leaders, regulatory agencies, regional development agencies, cluster organisations, patient organisations and regional knowledge institutions, healthcare actors, ... and will bring regional strengths, needs and barriers to the attention of national and European level. Based on a thorough mapping exercise and addressing specific regional needs, while taken the different levels of PM adoption into account, a modular regional roadmap for PM implementation will be developed. Actions will be taken to support interregional collaborations in the field of PM and identify opportunities for funding or investment by the framework programme, the structural funds or the EIB, whereby efforts will be taken to link remote and sparsely populated regions to regions that are more advanced in PM implementation. Alignment will also be made to smart specialisation initiatives focussing on PM. The integrated approach of SAPHIRE should accelerate the implementation of PM across the European regions, thereby accelerating the uptake of PM in general.

The development and uptake of novel digital technologies in healthcare are associated with several barriers, such as expensive and risky development processes, quality and security requirements, and fragmentation in regulatory and reimbursement schemes. Open innovation is an approach designed to foster innovation processes, increase efficiency, and reduce costs by bringing together various stakeholders of the healthcare ecosystem to create a supportive environment for innovation that helps overcome existing barriers. COHES.io intends to create an interregional open innovation environment for digital health by interconnecting the regional ecosystems of Norte from Portugal, Malopolskie from Poland and Attica from Greece. We aim to increase the connectedness of these regions by introducing common tools for collaboration and networking; to improve the efficiency of healthcare innovation by identifying possibilities for joint interventions (e.g. the creation of an interregional virtual living lab), and to support the transfer of best practice innovation support schemes. Via a bottom-up co-creation process involving a diverse mix of innovation stakeholders joint actions will be identified, and their implementation will be secured by the engagement of public authorities (COHES.io’s associated partners), being responsible for relevant innovation strategies and funding programmes. TU Delft, a central actor of a leading and well-interconnected innovation hub, will facilitate the mapping of common challenges, identifying synergies and complementarities in regional capacities and designing joint interventions with a methodology emerging from the EIT Health DRIVE ecosystem development program. Being one of the regional nodes of EIT Health, InnoStars provides the framework for cooperation and ensure the European-level dissemination and exploitation of COHES.io results’ and the extension of the applied methodology to further European ecosystems.

The CoDEPlugin project (COnnecting the Dots – Embedding Plug-In within national innovation support schemes) aims to enhance the alignment of national and regional innovation programs with the European Innovation Council's (EIC) Plug-in scheme. This novelty under Horizon Europe, is designed to streamline the process for innovation-driven companies—startups and SMEs—to access support under the EIC Accelerator. However, many countries still face challenges in certifying their programs, resulting in unequal access to this European-level support. CoDEPlugin responds this issue by analyzing the gaps between national support programs and the Plug-in scheme's requirements. The project will conduct an in-depth assessment of the needs of startups and SMEs, the state of certified and uncertified programs, and the barriers hindering wider certification across the EU. The CoDEPlugin develops policy recommendations and practical guidelines to help innovation agencies design programs that align with Plug-in standards. Key activities include knowledge exchange among stakeholders, including Plug-in contact points, policymakers, and innovation agencies, and the creation of a Design Options Paper. It will provide actionable recommendations for aligning national programs with the Plug-in scheme and will be piloted to test its applicability. Fostering collaboration and sharing best practices lead to a more coherent and efficient European innovation support ecosystem. The CoDEPlugin consortium is well-represented by a diverse group of countries: strong innovators like FR, DE, moderate (IT, PT), which have successfully certified their programs. In contrast, Poland (emerging innovator), the largest of widening countries, ‘s not achieved certification. The consortium ensures a comprehensive analysis of the challenges and opportunities across stages of Plug-in implementation, providing a robust response to the needs of both well-established and underperforming innovation systems.

The Cross-KIC Global Outreach programme was established in 2018 to narrow the competitive innovation gap between Europe and other leading markets around the world. It connects the EIT’s innovation ecosystem with those of strategic innovation valleys worldwide, securing the EU and EIT’s position on the global innovation map as a leading player. The EIT Global Outreach has developed and implements a unique, efficient and agile method that delivers high-impact activities in strategic outreach locations, executing the EC’s bilateral agreements in line with international priorities to create significant value for the European economy. The Global Outreach forges synergies, provides access, and generates success stories with global innovation leaders. It enables innovations to be launched on the global market, supports startups in attracting investments, facilitates cross-border consortium building and more. To date the Global Outreach cluster consistently exceeds its core KPIs, with 27 innovations launched on the market, and over €84M investments raised by supported startups and scaleups. The Global Outreach is active in the following strategic locations: Hubs: EIT Hub Silicon Valley (established 2018), EIT Hub Israel (established 2019), EIT Hub UK (established 2024) Pilot locations: US East Coast (2022, 2023, 2024), Japan (2023) Canada (2024) The Global Outreach innovation Hubs and the Global Platform, which operates pilot programmes in key locations, have developed specialized expertise in driving global impact. Their organizational knowledge spans open innovation, global market access strategies, cross-border consortium building, and more. The cluster runs a variety of results-driven programmes worldwide, each tailored to the technology development lifecycle—from ideation to global market launch. These include open innovation programmes for corporates, go-to-market programmes that help startups and scaleups enter new markets, lab-to-market education for researchers turning breakthrough technologies into startups, and consortium building for Horizon Europe open calls.

To address the low start-up survival rate and the lack of funding in “modest” and “moderate” innovation ecosystems within Europe – namely in Central and Eastern European countries - the consortium (led by EIT Health in collaboration with InnoStars, Civitta and other entities, as well as an advisory board including the EIF) will use their individual expertise to implement activities that build critical mass on both the investor and venture-building front. Given the investment challenges in early-stage ventures, the Project will seek to collaborate with local start-up support organizations to provide capacity building initiatives as well as to derisk local innovators to set the foundations for modest and moderate regions to become sustainable and competitive with more dynamic regions within the European ecosystem. The project will be structured around the impact pathway methodology (scoping, engaging and implementing). The specific objectives are: 1) to build robust and sustainable early-stage investment ecosystems and increase critical mass; 2) to increase venture investments through a) cultivating life sciences local investment and b) attracting foreign investors into the local innovation ecosystem; 3) to provide de-risking and investment readiness support for Dealflow exchange to increase syndication, and 4) to disseminate and implement project outcomes, create European foundation to address fragmentation in EU market and support cross-border investments In addition to said objectives, as well as the expected outcomes set out in the call, the Project will aim to impact wider European goals, including furthering the European Innovation Agenda, increasing investment competitiveness, start-up as wells as job creation, knowledge transfer, and widening European outreach. Furthermore, project results are expected to be applicable to other regions and non-health related industries and scope a Pan-European funding initiative for health tech ventures rich in assets.