Brussels, 10/04/2012 (Agence Europe) - When it comes to health and medical research, the European Commission intends to focus on three domains in its final call for tender under the seventh EU R&D programme, namely brain research, antimicrobial drug resistance and comparative effectiveness research (identification of best practices).
The Commission will not be publishing the final programme until the second fortnight of June 2012, but last week it published a working document giving a general idea of the main areas to be covered in the call for tender for funding in 2013. The general approach remains “to stimulate innovation and SME participation via broad, bottom-up topics implemented by the two-stage submission and evaluation procedure”, while incorporating the new EUROPE 2020 objectives (turning theory into practice and encouraging innovation).
Along with the three priority areas, the Commission also wants to encourage the development of personalised medicine approaches, cardiovascular research, safety and efficacy of therapies, cancer and public health research and translating research results into innovative applications for health. It says this will provide the opportunity to test the effectiveness of therapies for traumatic brain injury through a large-scale trial, cancer therapies, and palliative care, adapting off-patent medicines for paediatric or elderly use. (JK/transl.fl)