Deadline: 19-Sep-23
The European Commission (EC) is offering grants to support personalised prevention of non-communicable diseases – addressing areas of unmet needs using multiple data sources under the Horizon Europe Framework Programme (HORIZON).
Scope
- Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are responsible for the majority of the disease burden in Europe and are the leading cause of avoidable premature death. The human and financial cost of NCDs is high and expected to grow. Reducing the burden of NCDs requires a holistic approach and tackling health inequalities across the board. Preventing NCDs from developing in the first place will be at the core of successful public health programmes in the future.
- Personalised approaches and the development of targeted interventions have led to an impressive progress in several fields of medicine and have been included in many treatments. However, the use of stratification and individualisation in guiding prevention strategies is still not widely in use even though examples of its potential are accumulating. Identifying people at risk of developing a particular disease before the disease starts to manifest itself with symptoms greatly improves treatment options. It is estimated that about two thirds of all NCDs are preventable, many affecting people who are unaware of their disease risks or do not have access to information pertaining to the management of the condition.
- Personalised prevention is the assessment of health risks for individuals based on their specific background traits to recommend tailored prevention. This can include any evidence-based method. Personalised prevention strategies complement general public health prevention programmes without replacing them, optimising the benefit of both approaches. Personalised prevention is ideally suited to the use of large data sets, computational and omics approaches, with design and use of algorithms, integrating in-depth biological and medical information, machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI) and ‘virtual twin’ technology, taking into account explainable and transparent AI.
- The funded projects will work towards reducing the burden of NCDs in line with the ‘Healthier Together’ – EU Non-Communicable Diseases Initiative. This does not limit the scope of projects under this topic to particular diseases as any disease area of interest, co-morbidities and health determinants can be addressed.
- Accordingly, the proposed research is expected to deliver on all of the following points:
- Enable the understanding of areas of unmet need in NCDs prevention, possibly also addressing disease mechanism, management of disease progression and relapse. Providing new approaches for prevention, focussing on the digitally supported personalised dimension, that can be adopted and scaled up.
- Devise new or improved ambitious policy and intervention options, with expected high population-wide impact on the target groups in question. To be proposed and made available for effective health promotion and disease prevention including targeted communication strategies to successfully reach out to the risk groups.
- Design an integrated, holistic approach that includes several of the following aspects: genetic predisposition to NCDs, meta-genomics, epigenomics, the microbiome, metabolomics, sleep disorders, large cohorts, molecular profiling in longitudinal health screening, impact of lack of physical activity, novel predictive biomarker candidates, diets and nutrition, eating habits for designing customised dietary patterns (geographical variation), and the influence of choice environment on personal choices.
- Study the ethical, legal and social aspects as well as health economics of the personalised prevention tools and programmes being developed. Consider optimal health counselling and communication to the patients/citizens. Address legal aspects of balancing the right not to know and the obligation of helping people in danger.
- Furthermore, the proposed research is expected to deliver on several of the following points:
- Develop and validate effective strategies to prevent NCDs and optimise health and well-being of citizens (including the most vulnerable). Propose the strategies to policymakers along with mechanisms to monitor their progress. The strategies need to be aligned with relevant national and European health laws and policies.
- Provide scientific evidence on interactions between the genetic predisposition to multifactorial diseases and environmental factors or environmental triggers. Propose scientifically supported personalised prevention strategies that ensure how to modify the environmental drivers of behavioural risk factors.
- Develop new computational tools combining and analysing comprehensive data with different dimensions to identify risk factors and modifiers. Creating procedures and algorithms to combine information from different sources (with standardised common data models) to generate risk scores for several diseases and provide health promotion recommendations for the individual as advised by healthcare professionals. Furthermore, develop advanced computational modelling techniques for predicting disease risk and predisposition (addressed together in an integrative approach) and identifying the optimal solution/intervention for different target groups and individuals.
- Develop tools and techniques to increase the efficiency and cost- effectiveness of on the one hand interventions, adjusting their scope, characteristics and resources, and on the other hand healthcare infrastructure and how it promotes and delivers health promotion, disease prevention, and care effectively to the different population groups.
- Design tools to collect various data to advance health promotion and disease prevention and strategies for providing omics essays for the general patient with a focus on cost-effectiveness and flexibility.
- Determine how to optimise the benefits of physical activity, smart monitoring of physical activity and sedentary behaviour with measurable data, addressing barriers to uptake and implementation of healthy lifestyles in daily life, understanding what promotion methods work and why, behavioural science to understand healthier choice environments. Balancing the ecosystem associated with the economic, social, and health consequences of NCDs. Affordability related consideration should be taken into account to ensure accessibility of new tools and techniques.
- Conduct data mining of real-world data and develop quantifiable and distinguishable indicators from wearables data, taking into account ‘light-weight’ AI means to ensure patient privacy and short reaction times.
- Demonstrate with a practical prototype on a given health challenge: from multimodal data collection to identification of an effective prevention strategy to be tested and validated for one or several NCDs.
Funding Information
The check will normally be done for the coordinator if the requested grant amount is equal to or greater than EUR 500 000, except for:
- public bodies (entities established as a public body under national law, including local, regional or national authorities) or international organisations; and
- cases where the individual requested grant amount is not more than EUR 60 000 (lowvalue grant).
Expected Impacts
Proposals for topics under this destination should set out a credible pathway to contributing to staying healthy in a rapidly changing society, and more specifically to one or several of the following impacts:
- Citizens adopt healthier lifestyles and behaviours, make healthier choices and maintain longer a healthy, independent and active life with a reduced disease burden, including at old ages or in other vulnerable stages of life.
- Citizens are able and empowered to manage better their own physical and mental health and well-being, monitor their health, and interact with their doctors and health care providers.
- Children and adolescents are empowered to better monitor and manage their physical, social and mental health with a view to lifelong healthy lifestyles.
- Society benefits from reduced economic and health burden from avoidable sickness, disease and premature death. Efficiency is increased by targeting scarce resources in appropriate, cost-effective ways, to areas of high social return, contributing to an improvement and optimisation of health and well-being of citizens and reduction of health inequalities.
- Citizens´ trust in knowledge-based health interventions and in guidance from health authorities is strengthened, including through improved health literacy, resulting in increased engagement in and adherence to effective strategies for health promotion, disease prevention and treatment, while digital literacy inequalities are minimised.
- Health policies and actions for health promotion and disease prevention are knowledge-based, people-centred, personalised and thus targeted and tailored to citizens’ needs, and designed to reduce health inequalities.
Expected Outcome
This topic aims at supporting activities that are enabling or contributing to one or several impacts of destination “Staying healthy in a rapidly changing society”. To that end, proposals under this topic should aim at delivering results that are directed at, tailored towards and contributing to several of the following expected outcomes:
- Citizens have access to and use effective personalised prevention schemes and health counselling (including through digital means) that take into account their individual characteristics and situation. Individuals can be assigned to particular groups based on their characteristics, and receive advice adequate to that group. Stratification of a population into groups showing similar traits allows for effective personalised disease prevention.
- Health professionals use effective, tried and tested tools to facilitate their work when advising both patients and healthy individuals. Public health programme owners gain insight into the specificities and characteristics of disease clusters within the population through stratification. This can then be used to facilitate the identification of population groups with elevated risk of developing certain diseases and improve the programmes, update them and design effective strategies for optimal solutions and interventions.
- National and regional programmes make better use of funds, data infrastructure and personnel in health promotion and disease prevention, primary and secondary healthcare. They can consider the use of new or improved ambitious policy and intervention options, with expected high population-wide impact, for effective health promotion and disease prevention.
- Companies generate opportunities for new product and service developments to cater to the needs of the healthcare service and individuals.
Eligibility Criteria
To be eligible for funding, applicants must be established in one of the following countries:
- the Member States of the European Union, including their outermost regions: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden.
- the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) linked to the Member States: Aruba (NL), Bonaire (NL), Curação (NL), French Polynesia (FR), French Southern and Antarctic Territories (FR), Greenland (DK), New Caledonia (FR), Saba (NL), Saint Barthélemy (FR), Sint Eustatius (NL), Sint Maarten (NL), St. Pierre and Miquelon (FR), Wallis and Futuna Islands (FR).
- countries associated to Horizon Europe: Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Faroe Islands, Georgia, Iceland, Israel, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine.
- Specific cases:
- Affiliated entities — Affiliated entities (i.e. entities with a legal or capital link to a beneficiary which participate in the action with similar rights and obligations to the beneficiaries, but which do not sign the grant agreement and therefore do not become beneficiaries themselves) are allowed, if they are eligible for participation and funding.
- Associated partners — Associated partners (i.e. entities which participate in the action without signing the grant agreement, and without the right to charge costs or claim contributions) are allowed, subject to any conditions regarding associated partners set out in the specific call conditions.
- Entities without legal personality — Entities which do not have legal personality under their national law may exceptionally participate, provided that their representatives have the capacity to undertake legal obligations on their behalf, and offer guarantees to protect the EU’s financial interests equivalent to those offered by legal persons.
- EU bodies — Legal entities created under EU law including decentralised agencies may be part of the consortium, unless provided for otherwise in their basic act.
For more information, visit European Commission (EC).