The Communication on the mid-term review of the implementation of the Digital Single Market Strategy (COM(2017)228) identified three priorities on digital transformation of health and care (DTHC): citizens' access to their data; data infrastructure; interaction between citizens and healthcare providers for better health management. That document indicated that specific measures would be elaborated in a dedicated Communication to be adopted in the months to follow.

Demographic change and the ageing of the population create new heterogeneous challenges for age-friendly living, recreational and working environments such as a shrinking workforce and increasing numbers of workers with functional impairments, chronic conditions, care duties or re-integration in and later retirement from the labour market.

Citizens in ageing populations wish to stay in their homes for as long as possible. They are however at risk of age related impairments such as poor health, cognitive impairment, frailty and social exclusion with considerable negative consequences for their independence, quality of life, that of those who care for them, and for the sustainability of health and care systems.

The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) is launching two new Calls for proposals with topics on Alzheimer's disease, big data, vaccines, autoimmune disease, the blood-brain barrier, drug development, and the exploitation of IMI project results. The total budget for the two Calls stands at just over EUR 130 million.

INNOLABS 1st Open Call for innovative projects in personalized healthcare will be open from the 15th of June until the 30th of September 2017. Up to 25 best ideas from SMEs will be selected to enrol into an Acceleration Programme where each team will obtain support worth up to 50,000€ (equity-free) per project, distributed as follows:

The RELIEF project, coordinated by BravoSolution Spain, is looking for innovative ICT solutions to improve the self-management of chronic pain patients. The call for tenders is now open until the 15th of September. RELIEF is a Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) project funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 Programme.

The successful exploration of new foundations for radically new future technologies requires supporting a large set of early stage, high risk visionary science and technology projects to investigate new ideas. Here agile, risk-friendly and highly interdisciplinary research approaches are needed with collaborations that are open to all sciences and disciplines and that dissolve the traditional boundaries between them.

Autism, diabetes, cancer and pain are among the topics for the €348 million 10th Call for proposals launched under the IMI2 programme. Other topics in the Call focus on: the creation of a European network for clinical trials in children; the biomanufacture of certain medicines; the need to include the patient perspective in medicines development; and the role of certain genes in disease.

The activity aims at developing and validating radically new ICT based concepts and approaches for empowering and motivating people in need of guidance and care due to age related conditions, in cooperation with their carers where relevant, and to help them improve and maintain their independence, functional capacity, health status as well as preserving their physical, cognitive, mental and social well-being.

Despite serious efforts deployed at national and European level, the European Union sees significant internal disparities in terms of research and innovation performance as also identified in the Innovation Union Scoreboard. The disparities are equally present in health research and innovation and this call seeks solutions specifically adapted to this domain.