Second Coronavirus Call for an Expression of Interest

This second call for an expression of interest complements the first expression of interest that the European Commission published in January 2020, which led to the funding of 18 projects in March 2020. The first expression of interest focused on advancing the knowledge on SARS-CoV-2 and its impact on infected persons, with the aim of contributing to an efficient patient management and/or public health preparedness and response.

Since then, it has become even more vital to rapidly deliver innovative solutions to contain and mitigate the outbreak and to better care for patients, survivors, vulnerable groups, frontline (health) care staff and their communities – especially in the coming 18 months. Policy makers (at all levels), care providers and other employers urgently need practical evidence-based guidelines to deal with problems resulting from current containment and mitigation measures to control the outbreak. Studies of cohort(s) could rapidly identify what factors influence the susceptibility to infection, clinical manifestation, therapeutic response and clinical outcomes. The quick development and deployment of innovative, adaptive, resilient production methods and solutions (IT-or other) could quickly address immediate needs in health and social care provision.

Five topics

Considering the huge impact of the pandemic, the scope of this expression of interest has 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

This Call of expression of interest is funded through actions of the "SC1 Health, demographic change and wellbeing" of Horizon2020. This expression of interest invites proposals for R&I activities that aim for a wide scale, rapid (in general within 3-24 months) application of health-based solutions to respond quickly to the COVID-19 pandemic, taking into account the wide variety of approaches how care is delivered across Europe.

Proposals should consider the strong involvement of end-users (including civil society organisations) and/or strategic partners during the course of the project. Possible end-users and strategic partners are; local or regional health authorities or other types of care delivery organisations (also in their role as employers), civil society organisations, as well as public and private organisations, such as investors and innovation accelerators.

Proposals will contribute to making healthcare systems and societies more resilient to pandemics in terms of prevention, protection and treatment of the population and COVID-19 patients. Projects could make significant and immediate impacts in improving the quality of life of the most vulnerable and the, well-being and operational capacity of frontline workers. In addition, this expression of interest encourages proposals to come forward that lead to increasing short term production and distribution capacities and proposals that facilitate new effective approaches for multi-level cooperation between, local, regional Member States and EU-levels. Actions must demonstrate how they bring about a faster, more impactful, cost-effective and larger scale implementation of innovative (technological and non-technological) solutions to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

All deadlines are at 17.00 Brussels local time. Any change in the deadlines will be duly communicated.

For more information visit the website of The European Commission.

Information session

As on 19 May 2020 the Commission launches a 2nd special call Expression of Interest for research and innovation to address the COVID-19 pandemic, an online information session is organised on Wednesday 20 May 2020 from 14h00 to 16h30. Link for web streaming : https://webcast.ec.europa.eu/2nd-call-infosession-20may2020

Source: The European Commission

Second Coronavirus Call for an Expression of Interest

‹ News overview