More than 55 million people worldwide suffer from dementia. Alzheimer disease (AD) is the main cause of this fatal disorder, without any effective disease modifying therapy. Early diagnosis and lifestyle modifications can significantly reduce the costs of care and treatment. There is no conceptual plan implementing modern diagnostic methods in the clinical practice in Czechia and Slovakia. The interaction between universities and private sector developing molecular diagnostic tools is fragmented and lacking. Limited number of talented students are invested in applied AD-focused research. The aim of ADDIT-CE is to interlink two ecosystems in Brno and Bratislava region, embracing the full quadruple helix of innovation driving actors: excellent scientific teams from Masaryk University and Slovak Academy of Sciences, collaborating with top biotech companies: Geneton, BioVendor, and MultiplexDX. Societal actors will be represented by organisations such as Slovak and Czech Alzheimer Societies, Memory Center and Czech Brain Aging Study. The regional government will be involved via Ministry of Health Slovak Republic, and South Moravian Innovation Centre. The joined ecosystems will unite R&I activities focusing on new diagnostic methods and their applications and further interlink academia and business spheres by creating a pilot industrial PhD programme. ADDIT-CE will generate a joint cross-border strategy covering basic and applied research activities aiming on accelerating the development of new tools for preclinical AD diagnostics and lifestyle/pharmacological intervention monitoring. New cutting-edge technologies will be transferred into clinical practise. Results of ADDIT-CE will be used to develop the Slovak National Plan to Combat Dementia, to enrich the Czech National Plan for AD, and will be widely disseminated to end users and society. ADDIT-CE will join forces of the involved ecosystems to revolutionise diagnostic approaches in both countries.

The European Rare Diseases Research Alliance (ERDERA) aims to improve the health and well-being of the 30 million people living with a rare disease in Europe, by making Europe a world leader in Rare Disease (RD) research and innovation, to support concrete health benefits to rare disease patients, through better prevention, diagnosis and treatment. This Partnership will deliver a RD ecosystem that builds on the successes of previous programmes by supporting robust patient need-led research, developing new diagnostic methods and pathways, spearheading the digital transformational change connecting the dots between care, patient data and research, while ensuring strong alignment of strategies in RD research across countries and regions. Structuring goal-oriented public-private collaborations targeted at interventions all along the R&D value chain will ensure that the journey from knowledge to patient impact is expedited, thereby optimising EU innovation potential in RD. To support its ambition and missions ERDERA has been designed as a comprehensive and integrated ecosystem of which structure can be compared to an institute encompassing three main parts: (i) funding, (ii) internal (in house) Clinical Research Network that implements research activities targeting clinical trial readiness of RDs and accelerating diagnosis and translation of research discovery into improved patient care, and (iii) related supporting services (Data, Expertise, Education and Training) as well as an acceleration hub that serve external and internal RD community, all supported by all-embracing coordination and strategy and foundational (inter)national alignment.

Health and care systems in Europe are facing core common challenges, which require harmonised and coordinated solutions. The European Partnership on Transforming Health and Care Systems (THCS) represents a unique strategic opportunity to bring together stakeholders, create synergies, coordinate Research and Innovation actions, facilitate the digitization of health and care services and support the transformation of health and care systems with innovative solutions driven by knowledge and evidence. The general objective of THCS is to contribute to the transition towards more sustainable, efficient, resilient, inclusive, innovative and high-quality people-centred health and care systems equally accessible to all people. For this purpose, THCS aims not only to create new knowledge and scientific evidence but to co-design new solutions and support their transfer and scale-up across countries and regions while also fostering capacity building. The approach for a successful and smooth implementation of THCS will focus on three main work streams: 1) Filling the knowledge gaps with research actions aiming at providing the necessary evidence, 2) Implementation and transfer aiming at supporting actions focusing on the testing of existing solutions and adaptability in different national and regional contexts, and 3) Boosting health and care systems through dedicated activities (capacity building and trainings, study visits, technical assistance, twinning, networking) involving different health and care stakeholders. To address these three work streams, THCS is built around four pillars that group different types of activities addressing different types of stakeholders of the health and care system. The activities are organised in ten Work Packages working closely together to achieve the objectives of the Partnership and clustered in the four Pillars.