New report on improving innovation in European healthcare systems

A report entitled ‘Building an Open Innovation ecosystem in Europe for healthcare’ has been launched in the European Parliament. The report calls firstly for a task force to be set up within the European Commission to promote open innovation within healthcare and secondly, for the adaptation of EU industrial policies to develop lead markets for life-science innovation.

The report is a product of a special task force established and funded under the Cyprus Presidency of the EU and made up of representatives of the  pharmaceutical industry and other stakeholders, including the European Brain Council, the Cyprus Ministry of Health and the NHS Institute for Innovation (UK).

Responding to the sustainability threats faced by European health systems (eg, ageing, chronic diseases, financial pressures), the report calls for more coordinated approaches to innovation, such as the existing Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI). The report aims to provide ‘an Open Innovation roadmap to create an integrated and interdependent environment (ecosystem) where companies, scientists, policymakers, governments, patients and other organisations can interact productively to promote radical change and innovation in healthcare supported by new developments in information and communication technologies’.

Its four major recommendations to the European Union are to:

1. establish a new Public-Private Partnership under the European Commission-funded Horizon 2020 research programme focused on common industry and public health needs, building on the achievements of and lessons learned from the IMI;

2. create a cross directorate task force within the European Commission to address the barriers to establishing this Open Innovation healthcare ecosystem through a partnership-centred approach;

3. create an European Health Institute aiming at integrating the different actions from …