EIT Health is one of eight Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), an EU body and Institutionalised Partnership under Horizon Europe’s Pillar III – Innovative Europe. EIT Health’s vibrant community of more than 150 partner organisations from the worlds of business, research and academia, empowers a network of world-leading health innovators. We bridge the gap between industry and academia to take on some of Europe’s biggest health challenges – promoting better health of citizens, strengthening healthcare systems and contributing to a sustainable health economy. EIT Health collaborates across disciplines, borders and sectors, reinforcing excellence, creating knowledge and innovation, and encouraging greater investment, to deliver outcomes that matter most to citizens and patients. In the eighth year since its inception, EIT Health is consolidating its activities under a single unified structure: the Flagship. The 2023-2025 Flagships will tackle single-issue, highly focused topics based on EU health priorities and will be the pathways to EIT Health reaching the impact set in it's Strategic Agenda.

Building on the recommendations of the joint working group between EIC and EIT boards, as well as the letter of intent between digital, energy, climate KICs and EIC, this proposed action aims to ensure greater synergies by testing new collaboration mechanisms between EIT Health and the Enhanced EIC Pilot. The core element is a mechanism on how to promote and extend the benefits of EIT Health Accelerator programmes to EIC projects that have received the ‘Seal of Excellence’. It will include networking, matchmaking and advisory activities, like the European Health Catapult events, to increase connectedness among players in the broad innovation ecosystem around EIT Health, and the innovators' ecosystem provided by the EIC. The primary goal of the collaboration will be to enhance Europe’s support of diversity, digital health and technological innovation, aligned with the Commission’s principles. To this end, the EIT Health Network and its expertise in health will be utilised in Programs for all stages of start-up maturity. The EIT Health Bootcamp programmes will support EIC Pathfinder Innovators in creating and validating strong health sector-specific business plans. EIT Health Clusters, Accelerators and Incubators will help EIC Accelerator start-ups expand into new markets through the Bridgehead Programme. The EIT Health Gold Track will help EIC Accelerator start-ups with massive growth potential to develop and implement a clear strategy for global expansion. The action proposed will also explore possibilities and modalities of co-investment in the context of the EIC Fund and Accelerator pilot and the EIT Health Access to Finance instruments, including Crowdfunding, Investor Network or the Venture Centre of Excellence We will also encourage the most innovative businesses stemming from the EIT Health network to apply to the Enhanced EIC Pilot, and will channel or fast-track them to create a pipeline of impactful innovations.

The Cross-KIC Global Outreach programme was established in 2018 to act as a bridge, linking the EIT’s innovation ecosystem with those of innovation valleys around the world, forging synergies with global innovation leaders and creating significant value for the European economy, alongside the local ecosystems. The cluster currently comprises a well established and successful EIT Hub in Israel and Silicon Valley, and an additional global platform dedicated to expanding the reach of EIT to new locations was established in 2023 as will be detailed in this business plan, under the new leadership of EIT Health. A new Hub will be established in the Uk as of January 2024. The Global Outreach programme creates significant value for the EIT Community, as well as the outreach location, with tangible success stories and concrete results from the past 4 years of activity. These stand to show the significant collaborations that have been forged in each outreach location, the impact of creating significant ties between Europe and these strategic global innovation valleys. The strong brand awareness that has been carefully crafted, and the intricate thought process that has been put into creating a strong foundation for each hub. This business plan for the next three years, 2023 - 2025 builds upon this strong foundation that has been established, and lays out the groundwork for further strengthening the existing Israel hub and creating a flexible and “on demand” global platform that will further expand EIT’s global footprint. The growth of the Global Outreach programme with an additional global platform with programmes in multiple locations will be based upon the scale of successful programmes that have a strong foundation, and adapting them to the needs and risks of the local ecosystems. The BP will show the strengthening and expansion of the Global Outreach programme stands in EIT’s best interests, connecting talents, knowledge and key players worldwide to tackle societal challenges.

The Cross-KIC Strategic Education Cluster (Edu Cluster) is an unprecedented endeavour to integrate, systematise and leverage education activities from different KICs, create joint offerings, and open new opportunities for raising EIT’s profile and market penetration. By ensuring interactions and synergies between KICs’ educational activities, the Edu Cluster creates cross-cutting opportunities, fosters peer-learning, and allows efficiency gains. As a result, EIT partners are equipped to innovate solutions to global challenges tackled by European policies, most notably the Green Deal and the Deep Tech Talent Initiative (DTTI). The different Work Packages (WPs) comprising the Edu Cluster reflect the need for transversality of EIT’s educational offer. WP2 will develop, execute, and scale the DTTI by training one million deep tech talents by 2025, therefore contributing to the new European Innovation Agenda. WP3 will build on its success with the Girls Go Circular project by expanding its educational resources and reach to all EU member states. WP4 will support the long-term sustainability of the EIT Alumni community while ensuring inclusion and diversity. WP5 will scale up the EIT Virtual Campus (VC) through upskilling or reskilling learners with competences in line with market demand. EIT VC will become the go-to educational portal to address knowledge needs in Europe and complement the resources of higher education institutions. WP6 will explore a mode of operation with the platform consortium (hereafter InnoNext)for the EU Next Generation Innovation Internship scheme and coordinate integration into the scheme with the KICs. The Edu Cluster, in synergy with other Cross-KIC Clusters and the HEI Initiative, will keep strengthening the Cross-KIC offering along the entire education value chain.

There is a growing recognition that health and wellness apps need to play a much stronger role in health care systems, self-care and health prevention than they do today. However, health care systems, health professionals, patients and citizens lack means to adequately assess the quality and reliability of the many apps to choose from, for every purpose, in each app store. Suppliers experience the varying national approval processes as confusing and unclear as to what is expected and the depth of evidence that is required by each approval body. We intend to break through the impasse by leveraging the golden opportunity of the publication in July 2021 of the ISO 82304?2 Technical Specification (TS) and its health app quality label. Work is now needed to turn this globally endorsed quality assessment and health app quality label into the EU assessment and EU mHealth label, embed it within the approval and reimbursement processes of European countries and foster cross-country alignment of these approval processes. The objective of Label2Enable is threefold: achieve trust, use and adoption. We will pursue: 1. trust with an EU certification scheme that results in consistent compliant inclusive app assessments 2. use with: - a more detailed health app quality report that enables health professionals to recommend apps and insurers to speed up decisions on reimbursements - supporting communication that enables all patients, citizens and carers to use the label in considering health apps - social experimentation to promote app stores, app libraries and other routinely used trusted sources that (seek to) offer health apps to effectively publish the label alongside them 3. adoption of the TS and cross-country recognition with pilots, use stories, advocacy, mass communication and targeted multi-stakeholder engagement, affordable app assessments and a sustainable non-profit entity that will maintain the scheme, accredit app assessors and promote the TS after the project.