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Ageing demographics and declining health in older adults are predicted to put unaffordable pressures on care systems and society, so change and innovation is required to better cope with these challenges. Old-age support ratios are projected to halve between 2012 and 2050 across OECD countries. There are other factors, such as increased urbanisation and migration that result increasingly in older people living alone and contribute to making current approaches to professional care, informal care and service delivery unsustainable.

Horizon 2020 funding is intended to help boost Europe's knowledge-driven economy, and tackle issues that will make a difference in people's lives. This includes 12 areas that will be a focus for action in 2014/2015, including topics such as personalised healthcare, digital security and smart cities.

The EU has just launched the first round of applications for its new 7 year research and innovation programme, Horizon 2020. Over €15m is available to transform entrepreneurial culture, give students the confidence, knowhow and support to set up their own businesses and to help promising web startups launch in Europe and go global.

The Horizon 2020 Work Programme 2014-15 sets out the funding opportunities under the different parts of the programme; all are being published today on the Participant Portal. Each part describes the overall objectives, the respective calls, and the topics within each call. Each topic describes the challenge to be addressed, the scope of the activities to be carried out, and the expected impacts to be achieved. Compared with the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), there are relatively fewer calls and topics.

The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) is launching its 9th Call for proposals, with a total budget of €135 million (€63 million of which comes from the EU's Seventh Framework Programme, and €72 million of which comes from EFPIA companies' in-kind contributions).

Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs is an exchange programme which gives entrepreneurs who intend to start a business or have recently started one the chance to learn from experienced owners of small businesses in other European Union countries.

This call is dedicated to a specific SME innovation initiative designed to encourage stronger SME efforts towards research and innovation. SMEs need to have a leading or coordinating role in the consortium and 50 % of EU funding requested going to SMEs or SMEs joint venture.

Are you thinking about setting up your own business or are you already a successful entrepreneur? The Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs exchange scheme offers an excellent opportunity for new entrepreneurs to acquire relevant skills for managing a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME).

Young European entrepreneurs will be able to spend up to six months working with an experienced entrepreneur in another EU country and learn how to better manage and grow their own business. This is the concept of "Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs", a new exchange programme financed by the European Union and launched today in all the 27 Member States.

ICT for Health (eHealth) is looking for experts related to four objectives addressed by the call 4 (& 6 to be launched end 2009) for proposals (1 - Personal Health Systems; 2 - Patient Safety; 3 - Virtual Physiological Human; 4 - International Cooperation in VPH).