The European Commission is supporting 23 new research projects with a total of €128 million to address the continuing coronavirus pandemic and its effects.
The 23 projects involve 344 research teams from 39 countries, including 32 participants from 15 countries outside of the EU. The funding will enable researchers to strengthen and adapt industrial capacity to manufacture and deploy equipment such as ventilators, to prevent and treat coronavirus, to develop medical technologies and digital tools such as portable diagnostic system, to better understand the societal impacts of the pandemic, for example on vulnerable and marginalised groups, and to learn from large groups of patients (cohorts) across Europe in order to improve treatment.
The funding under Horizon 2020, the EU’s research and innovation programme, is part of the Commission's €1.4 billion pledge to the Coronavirus Global Response initiative, launched by President Ursula von der Leyen in May 2020. With this support, scientists will also be able to study large groups of patients across Europe. These research actions complement earlier efforts to develop diagnostics, treatments and vaccines.
Here are concrete examples of project to achieve these goals
Rapid Repurposing of manufacturing for vital medical supplies and equipment
4 projects - EU funding: € 22.1 million
impure (Injection Moulding Repurposing for Medical Supplies enabled by Additive Manufacturing) is repurposing and digitally transforming plastic, by processing industrial lines for the production of critical medical end products (PPE, ventilator accessories, fingertip pulse oximeter).
Medical technologies, digital tools and Artificial Intelligence analytics to improve surveillance and care at high Technology Readiness Levels 13 projects - EU funding: € 55.2 million
VASCOVID (Portable platform for the assessment of microvascular health in COVID-19 patients at the intensive care) will develop a portable, lightbased diagnostics to support work of intensive care units.
Behavioural, social and economic impacts of the outbreak responses
4 projects - EU funding: € 28 million
COVINFORM (COronavirus Vulnerabilities and INFOrmation dynamics Research and Modelling) will develop solutions, guidelines and recommendations to ensure that the needs of vulnerable and marginalised groups are appropriately considered in potential further waves of COVID-19 and future pandemics.
Pan-European COVID-19 cohorts 1 project - EU funding: € 19.9 million
ORCHESTRA (Connecting European Cohorts to Increase Common and Effective Response to SARSCoV-2 Pandemic) is using large group with similar characteristics to establish differentiated risks, inform on the best treatment and vaccine options and assess impact of mitigating measure on society.
Collaboration of existing EU and international cohorts of relevance to COVID-19
1 project - EU funding: € 3 milliona
unCoVer (Unravelling Data for Rapid Evidence-Based Response to COVID-19) is networking with 29 partners from 18 EU and international countries with the aim to bring together COVID-19-real-world data, to predict the disease development and to find strategies against the pandemic.
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