New € 122m funding opportunities for coronavirus research
20th May 2020 at 4:55 pm
The European Commission has just communicated an indicative investment of € 122 million for new Horizon 2020 calls addressing current challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Almost half of the total amount will be allocated to medical technologies, digital tools and AI-based solutions (SC1-PHE-CORONAVIRUS-2020-2B) to be used in diagnostics, environmental surveillance, telemedicine, personal protection equipment for healthcare practitioners and the general public, and COVID-19 data aggregation. The call topic will fund two categories of projects:
- Close-to-market solutions (TRL 7) that have received or are about to receive the CE marking conformity assessment for medical devices and are ready for large scale testing, piloting and deployment operations in critical healthcare areas. EU funding per project: € 2 to 5 million.
- Digital health hubs or accelerators willing to support technology providers for the further development of solutions that have been validated in lab environments (TRL 6-7 or higher) in view to obtain the CE marking. EU funding per project: € 10 million.
A total budget of € 23 million will be dedicated to the re-orientation and repurposing of production capacities to meet needs in terms of medical equipment (e.g. personal protective equipment, ventilators), diagnostic technologies as well as service systems and automated systems of disinfection (SC1-PHE-CORONAVIRUS-2020-2A).
Funding will also be directed to the socio-economic analysis of outbreak responses across Europe (SC1-PHE-CORONAVIRUS-2020-2C), studies of large-scale European cohorts to advance knowledge on the control of the SARS-CoV-2 infection (SC1-PHE-CORONAVIRUS-2020-2D) and networking activities of existing EU cohorts of relevance to COVID-19 (SC1-PHE-CORONAVIRUS-2020-2E).
The calls are open until 11 June, and consist of shorter proposals of maximum 45 pages instead of the usual 70 pages for Research and Innovation Actions (RIA) and Innovation Actions (IA) and 50 pages for Coordination and Support Actions (CSA) respectively.
As the European Commission seeks rapid responses to immediate needs, projects funded in the first three calls are expected to last three to a maximum of 24 months.
| Topic | Title | Type | Total budget (€) | EU contribution per project | Anticipated number of funded proposals |
| SC1-PHE-CORONAVIRUS-2020-2A | Repurposing of manufacturing for vital medical supplies and equipment | IA | 23,000,000 | 5,000,000 – 6,000,000 | 4 |
| SC1-PHE-CORONAVIRUS-2020-2B | Medical technologies, Digital tools and Artificial Intelligence (AI) analytics to improve surveillance and care at high Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) | IA | 56,000,000 | 2,000,000 – 5,000,000 Up to 10,000,000 if financial support to third parties | 9-10 |
| SC1-PHE-CORONAVIRUS-2020-2C | Behavioural, social and economic impacts of the outbreak response | RIA | 20,000,000 | 4,000,000 – 10,000,000 | 2-3 |
| SC1-PHE-CORONAVIRUS-2020-2D | Pan-European COVID-19 cohorts | RIA | 20,000,000 | 15,000,000 – 20,000,000 | 1 |
| SC1-PHE-CORONAVIRUS-2020-2E | Networking of existing EU and international cohorts of relevance to COVID-19 | CSA | 3,000,000 | 2,000,000 – 3,000,000 | 1 |
Contact us for support with your proposal
accelopment is fully committed to support health research efforts amid the current pandemic. We have vast experience in writing Health-related grant applications, as you can see from our recently funded Health projects: VANGUARD, EXIMIOUS and EURO SHOCK.
If you are applying in one of the calls, you are welcome to contact Dr Jeanette Müller, CEO of accelopment, or Mr Marco Cavallaro, Research & Innovation Project Manager, and we can discuss how we can help you the best as a contribution to European solidarity and human health.