Preparing a Horizon 2020 Health proposal in 6 weeks? Challenge accepted!

9th August 2018 at 12:19 pm

There are under two months left until the submission deadline for seven two-stage Health calls closes. We firmly believe that with careful planning, a high quality short proposal or stage-1 proposal can still be prepared in the time remaining. A short proposal consists of 10 pages (usually 7-8 pages Excellence and 2-3 pages of Impact). The big benefit of this two-stage submission procedure for coordinators and their partner is receiving feedback without having to write a full proposal. Once the first stage has been passed, chances of receiving funding greatly increase. For example, last years’ two-stage calls in Personalised Medicine (PM) went from a 15% success rate in the first stage to a 30% success rate in the second stage.

For the first stage, the consortium should be complete, i.e. all project partners confirmed, the work plan set up and the innovation or “beyond the state-of-the-art” well defined. However, there is no need for complex budget calculations as a breakdown of the costs is not required, just the total requested EC funding. For anyone looking for a detailed description of how the procedure works, we have written about it in the past.

Thinking about writing a Health Proposal in six weeks?

There are seven upcoming 2-stage calls with the deadline of the first stage (short proposal) on the 2^nd October 2018 and with the second stage deadline following half a year later on the 16^th April 2019:

• SC1-BHC-01-2019: Understanding causative mechanisms in co- and multimorbidities combining mental and non-mental disorders (Research and Innovation Action RIA)
• SC1-BHC-02-2019: Systems approaches for the discovery of combinatorial therapies for complex disorders (RIA)
• SC1-BHC-14-2019: Stratified host-directed approaches to improve prevention, treatment and/or cure of infectious diseases (RIA)
• SC1-BHC-19-2019: Implementation research for maternal and child health (RIA)
• SC1-BHC-22-2019: Mental health in the workplace (RIA)
• SC1-BHC-25-2019: Demonstration pilots for implementation of personalised medicine in healthcare (Innovation Action IA)
• SC1-BHC-30-2019: Towards risk-based screening strategies for non-communicable diseases (RIA)

Six weeks timeline

Six weeks is not a long time to prepare and write a Horizon 2020 proposal. Even though we call the first stage the short proposal, careful planning is essential. With the submission deadline in less than two months, now is the time to get serious about your Health proposal. The picture below is our idea of the ideal timeline for a smooth short proposal preparation process:

Follow our recommended steps to complete a first stage Health proposal in under two months:

• Make sure the core partners are committed to the project.
• Register your proposal and all partners on the EC Participant Portal. For this step each partner will have to have their own PIC.
• Collect the necessary information from partners for inclusion in Part A (online forms) and the cover page. As part of this step you’ll have to designate the lead for each partner.
• Define the basic Work Packages with key deliverables, milestones and risks/mitigation measures  as part of the concept and methodology (section 1.3).
• Draft your Excellence part covering the current state-of-the-art and the proposed innovation or beyond the state-of-the-art (section 2).
• Draft your Impact section (section 1). Use the remaining pages (10 pages minus the Excellence part).
• Review your proposal making sure it is no longer than 10 pages.
• Submit the final proposal via the EC Participant Portal. The proposal has to be submitted as a PDF file, other formats are not supported. Make sure you have a good look at the file before submitting, there’s always the possibility of errors when exporting.

Updated Health Work Programme for 2019

The latest update to the Health Work Programme for 2019 is now available from the EC (PDF). While there are no major changes, there is one update alongside four new calls:

• SC1-BHC-30-2019: Towards risk-based screening strategies for non-communicable diseases (RIA)
• SC1-BHC-31-2019: Pilot actions to build the foundations of a human cell atlas (RIA)
• SC1-BHC-32-2019: Towards a next-generation influenza vaccine to protect citizens worldwide – an EU-India collaboration (RIA)
• SC1-HCO-15-2019: Support for the functioning of the Global Research Collaboration for Infectious Disease Preparedness (GloPID-R) (CSA)
• The SC1-BHC-01 call towards understanding causative mechanisms in co- and multimorbidities now also addresses the combination of mental and non-mental disorders.

We can help you with your Health proposal

Interested in writing a proposal for any of the above-mentioned calls? Or are you looking for an experienced partner for project management or dissemination? If yes, then please contact us at +41 44 455 66 00 or through our website. We support both stage 1 and stage 2 proposals. Some of the health-related projects we have been involved in are:

• EURO SHOCK  intends to improve outcomes for patients suffering from cardiogenic shock
• IMPROvED is developing a clinically robust predictive blood test for pre-eclampsia
• Supporting LIFE is helping the treatment of seriously ill children in Malawi
• Codex4SMEs aims at improving healthcare by the enhanced adoption of Personalized Medicine (PM)
• PEARRL is an European Training Network (ETN) that provides training in drug development and regulatory science

The complete list of our current and previous projects can be found here.