The overarching goals of the Business Plan 2023-2025 are promoting better health of citizens, strengthening healthcare systems in Europe and contributing to a sustainable health economy
1. To accelerate needs-based health innovations to achieve wide market uptake in Europe by fostering collaborative projects that connect innovators with various stakeholders from the healthcare systems.
In 2023, EIT Health continued supporting development of deep-tech innovation projects to solve the pressing challenges in the healthcare sector without forgetting the need to solve both unmet market and patient needs. Implementation of the Flagship concept led to closer integration of Innovation, Education, and Business Creation programmes and services, achieving significant synergies, and reinforcing the innovator’s journey. Six new collaborative Innovation projects were selected through the Flagship calls connecting innovators with various stakeholders from the healthcare system.
In 2023 at total of 5 new Innovations successfully reached the market belonging to the following projects which can also be found on the EIT Health public website.
2. Increase the value and impact of EU-based SMEs in the health and healthcare sector to enhance their ability to compete on the global level.
EITH continued to support European start-ups, adjusting and aligning the goal of promoting European Start-up ecosystem to EIT Health’s new strategic Flagships. Both InvestHealth and Business Creation worked together to forger new modalities of collaboration with European institutions, to reinforce linkages that will help to guarantee quality deal flow and investment. 315 Start-ups were supported, Four Start-ups were created for Innovation, and KIC supported start-ups attracted 273 million Euros, well over the 2023 target.
Objectives 3 and 4: Attract and develop the skills of those with the potential to design, develop or utilise healthcare innovations, through novel education and training offers. Support healthcare providers, professionals and payors to transform care towards outcomes that have the highest impact and are of the most importance to patients.
In 2023, the Education portfolio continued contributing to reduce the shortage of entrepreneurial skills and competence around deep-tech as well as upskilling and reskilling the workforce to ease the adoption of innovations and solutions. Starting from the targets included in EIT Health´s strategic agenda and embracing he principles of the EIT Label for different segments, Education supported EIT labelled programmes as further developed the Academy online learning platform under the proposed Flagships, which all face extensive talent and capacity gaps. In 2023 EIT Health quadrupled its target for participants in (Non-Degree) Education and Training, training 15,722 people. 79 students successfully graduated from EIT labelled programmes, and 6 EIT labelled students and graduates joined start-ups.
Objective 5: Impact and drive healthcare innovation policy in Europe, based on evidence, learnings and experience from EIT Health activities.
2023 represented an important reference point for increasing EITHealth´s interactions with relevant stakeholders at the EU level, positioning the organization as a meaningful actor with strategic and implementation capability who can contribute to meeting specific policy priorities.
