12 December 2014 | On 9 December, the InnoLife consortium was announced the winning bid of the European Institution of Innovation and Technology’s (EIT) Health Knowledge and Innovation Community (KIC). With international headquarters at EuroTech Universities’ partner, Technische Universität München (TUM), the KIC will gather 144 industrial and scientific partners from across 14 EU countries to investigate key health issues. The EU will fund around €80 million per year for seven years, representing one of the largest publicly funded initiatives for health worldwide.
Over the next seven years EIT health partners, also including EuroTech Universities’ Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), will develop innovative products, education and services addressing the challenge of demographic change in Europe. To initiate and coordinate the numerous projects, the consortium will found a new company headquartered at TUM Campus Garching.
TU/e is one of the 54 leading partners of InnoLife, working in close collaboration with other stakeholders from the Brainport region, including Philips, the city of Eindhoven and Brainport Development. Health is one of TU/e’s Strategic Areas.
EPFL and TUM will work closely with Nestlé on nutrition. It is well know that nutrition has a major influence on the human metabolism and hence on our health.
By 2018, EIT Health aims to:
– Support and grow 90 new products/services annually
– Create 70 start-ups per year
– Reach 1 million students participating in its educational programmes per year
– Incubate 140 new business ideas per year
EuroTech Universities are already active partners in the first three KICs that were established in 2009:
– KIC InnoEnergy – TU/e
– Climate-KIC – Technical University of Denmark (DTU) – host of Nordic co-location centre; and TUM
– EIT ICT Labs – TU/e; and TUM
