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Catalonia is participating in an international call to be part of a future Knowledge and Innovation Community (KIC) in healthy living and active ageing organized by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). The EIT opened the call for proposals on 14 February 2014. Biocat, which has been working to promote this bid since 2009, played an active role in drafting and coordinating the proposal, which was submitted to the EIT on 10 September.

In 2008, the European Commission created the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) as an instrument to boost competitiveness in the EU and address a series of social challenges like health and demographic change; food supply; production of and access to clean energy; and the effects of climate change, among others. The EIT and its KICs play a key role in the new European research and innovation strategy, Horizon 2020, passed in 2011 and set to be fully put in place this year.

Since 2009, Biocat has coordinated the work carried out in Catalonia to allow companies and organizations to become members of the two new KICs in health and food: Healthy living and active ageing and Food4future. To this end, two work groups made up of Catalan organizations were created in 2012 and have now each joined European consortia to present their bids.

One of these work groups was created for the InnoLife bid, headed up by the University of Barcelona and Biocat, and has submitted a proposal for the KIC in healthy living and active ageing.

Over the coming months, EIT will review all of the proposals submitted, selecting three finalists that will have to defend their proposals orally to the EIT Selection Committee on 9 December 2014. Afterwards, the EIT will make its final decision on the KIC in Healthy Living and Active Ageing. If the InnoLife proposal were to win, an office of the KIC in Healthy Living and Active Ageing would be created in Barcelona. This office would give academic and innovation projects access to European funding. Leading a node of the future KIC in health is a key strategic project for the BioRegion, as it would help position Catalonia at the center of a European alliance for knowledge and entrepreneurship with clear opportunities to boost the Catalan economy by generating new technology and business.

InnoLife  

Biocat, along with the University of Barcelona, has promoted and coordinated participation of Catalan and Spanish institutions in the InnoLife bid. This consortium has nodes in Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Sweden and Germany, with world renowned participants including Siemens Healthcare, Roche DiagnosticsSanofiNovo Nordisk, IntelImperial College London, Oxford UniversityUniversity Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC), Karolinska Institutet and Erasmus University. The Spanish node, led from Catalonia, is made up of core partners from the business sector, including ATOSFerrer Internacional and Abbott; from the academic sector, including the University of Barcelona-Hospital Clínic, IESE and the Polytechnic University of Madrid; and the research sector, including IBEC-CERCA and the Biomechanics Institute of Valencia.

In creating this bid, the Spanish node has also worked closely with associate partners like Linkcare, Leitat, la Caixa Foundation, Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu, Catalan Agency for Health Information, Assessment and Quality (AQuAS), and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).

 

Read more about the call for proposals in the news on the Catalan bid for an EIT KIC.

 

 

 

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