# Preparatory webinar for Pre-commercial procurements - Horizon Europe Cluster 1 'Health'

**Channel:** HaDEA 
**Source:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qJ2tq-eibo
**Transcript page:** https://www.withtranscript.ai/video/2qJ2tq-eibo

## Chapters

- 0:00 — Welcome and Slido Participation Guidelines
- 2:31 — Innovation Procurement Instrument Overview
- 6:31 — Pre-commercial Procurement Concept & Features
- 10:52 — Participation Conditions and Actor Roles
- 17:01 — Project Activities, Funding and Deployment Options
- 22:46 — Proposal Preparation and Evaluation Criteria
- 27:46 — Support Resources and Partner Search
- 29:07 — EIC Support and Case Studies for Innovation Procurement
- 40:27 — Procurer Case Study: Consortium Formation & Needs
- 43:54 — Procurer Case Study: Implementation & Outcomes
- 55:11 — Cancer Mission Overview and Governance Structure
- 1:02:49 — Cancer PCP Topic Scope and Requirements
- 1:13:51 — Climate Change PCP Context and Application Details
- 1:25:35 — Live Q&A Part 1 – General and Cancer PCP Queries
- 1:30:16 — Live Q&A Part 2 – Climate PCP & Participation Questions

## Transcript

**[0:00] Speaker A:** The Webinar My name is Carmela Plaza Santos. I am the head of Unit of Health Innovations and Ecosystems Indigenous Research of the European Commission and it's my pleasure to welcome you this morning to this webinar that we have organized to provide you more information about the pre commercial procurement as an instrument and also to give you more information about the two specific PCBs that we will be funded in 2027. One in the context of the mission on cancer pre commercial procurement of affordable solutions for healthcare systems in the areas of cancer technologies, cancer medical devices or cancer medicines. The second one in Cluster one Tools co founded with the Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change Tools and technologies to support health adaptation to Climate change I'm here with a few colleagues that you will hear during this webinar, but the first want to take the floor will be Alex, my colleague Alex Mullet who's going to provide you with more information about the slido and the guidelines for questions.

**[1:07] Speaker A:** Alex, the floor is with you.

**[1:10] Speaker B:** Thank you Carmen. I hope you can all hear me well. So I just wanted to take a moment to explain how the questions will work during this webinar. So we will be using the Slido platform. You can join Slido via this QR code you see on the slide or by going to slido.com and entering the code Horizon.

**[1:30] Speaker B:** If you have a specific question about one of the topics, please please indicate at the beginning of your question which topic it's for by typing either cancer or climate. This will allow the speakers to more easily identify which questions are for them. And very importantly, we have disabled the chat in this webinar to avoid distractions for the speakers presenting. So no questions will be taken by the chat. So it's very important that you join this slido if you wish to ask for questions.

**[1:59] Speaker B:** So I'll give you a few seconds now as I'm talking to log into the slido with the code and if participants arrive late, the QR code will pop up at different times during the presentation. Anytime you see a big blue slide you will see the QR code and with that I pass it over back to Carmen to kick us off with the first presentation. Thanks.

**[2:26] Speaker A:** Thank you. Thank you Alex.

**[2:28] Speaker A:** So let's start.

**[2:31] Speaker A:** Well in this presentation I will focus on the instrument, what pre commercial procurement is, how it works and how we can support it. In other words, the rules of the game. Maybe we can move to the next slide. Innovation Procurement is a very powerful instrument to drive innovation from the demand side.

**[2:52] Speaker A:** It offers many opportunities. It is designed to Put the focus of the research and of the industry on the resolution of a public need. By doing that, it can speed up public sector modernization, improving the quality and efficiency of public services with breakthrough solutions, and at the same time speed up the time to market for businesses, generating growth and creating business opportunities for the industry, particularly small actors. So traditionally, research innovation grants fund the supply side, so encouraging researchers and companies to be innovative and leaving up to them to find customers afterwards. With the innovation procurement, we tackle things differently from the other side as we are looking for buyers who look for innovative solutions that do not fund them in the market.

**[3:44] Speaker A:** Sometimes companies don't see the demand for innovations and therefore they might not invest in those areas. But if the buyers would stand up and say, hey, I need innovations in this particular area, this could change the game. And this does change the game by opening new business opportunities for companies and speeding up their time to market. Thanks to this continuous working together between procurers and suppliers, which is at the core of the innovation procurement instrument. If we just fund research and development through grants, it means that customers are waiting to see what comes out, whether someone has developed anything, and then maybe what is developed does not really meet the needs that they have.

**[4:28] Speaker A:** So innovation procurement gives them the tool to start already steering and speeding up the developments in the directions that they need. It also helps companies attract investors. It helps also to create new jobs and technological leadership in areas new areas in Europe. Because having the public sector pushing companies developing things that otherwise they would not have realized that somebody really needs, then with this experience, they can be the first on the market. They can take leadership in new areas and creative new jobs in Europe to develop these innovations further.

**[5:08] Speaker A:** So by doing that, this instrument contributes also to reinforce our European strategic autonomy. If we do have more suppliers in Europe who can deliver the solutions that we need, we will of course be less dependent on those from other parts of the world. So for us, it's really a win win both for the demand and for the supply side. We can move to the next slide.

**[5:35] Speaker A:** But although the public sector is extremely important in Europe, Europe still lags behind in using its vast public sectors purchasing power to pull innovations in the market and in healthcare in particular. The public sector is very strong in Europe, as around 70% of public spending in health or spending in healthcare and is public. So if we want to break innovation in healthcare, public procurement is a very powerful instrument. Nevertheless, we are witnessing a change of the political context, a political ambition. As you can see in the different box here in this slide, we really want the political ambition in Europe to use its fast public sector purchasing power to pull innovation from the market.

**[6:24] Speaker A:** Next slide please.

**[6:31] Speaker A:** So what is pre commercial procurement? We all know what public procurement is when public with normal public procurement is when public buyers buy solutions from the market. In the case of pre commercial procurement, this comes before when there are actually no good solutions in the market that address the need of the public buyer and therefore research and development is needed. So we use this instrument to derisk new technologies, to compare different solution approaches that have not yet been completely validated or tested against each other. And it's also often used when, for example, it's too risky for buyers to do a normal procurement that would commit immediately for a large scale commercial deployment.

**[7:17] Speaker A:** As I was saying, this also offers opportunities to attract new small players to the market. So what does a public buyer do in a pre commercial procurement? Basically it buys research and development services. So this offers them the opportunity to steer, as we were saying, the development to what they really need. It's buying research and development services from several suppliers in parallel to compare different approaches, their pros and cons, and re evaluating also the solutions that are being developed whilst they are under development at the critical milestones in the process.

**[7:56] Speaker A:** An important characteristic also of this instrument is that the risk and benefits of the R and D are shared between the buyers and the suppliers. In concrete, the intellectual property rights will not be completely procured and owned by the public buyer. Their ownership will remain with the developers so that they can maximize the opportunities to commercialize their solutions. But of course the buyers will retain also the rights that they need to use those solutions or to license them out if needed for their use. We can move to the next slide and there you can visualize a little bit how the procurement process looks like.

**[8:40] Speaker A:** Before procuring, the procurers will do an open market consultation to get information about which spenders are already doing R and D, how far they have evolved, what kind of problems they have incurred. How can I learn from all this information to write my tender specifications in a way that I am asking for something that is realistic for them to do to achieve and also basically to ensure that in the market there is not yet solutions for my specific need? Important to mention that in pre commercial procurements, public buyers use the functional specification or performance requirements which describe which functionalities or performance requirements they would like to achieve instead of prescribing exactly how the vendor should go about. This is very important. It can cover all TRLs but typically goes from designing the solution in a first stage checking with those solutions, whether the solutions that are being developed meet the requirements and only proceeding with those that do meet the requirements to the second phase of prototyping and testing the solutions in lab settings and finally to developing the final solutions and testing them in environments that are representative for the procurer.

**[10:05] Speaker A:** What is important to know is that the pre commercial procurement only covers this part. So research and development, testing and potentially deployment of limited set of solutions that were developed during the project. They don't cover wide large scale deployment which typically happens in separate procurements afterwards that we call public procurement of innovative solutions and that you can see in the right side of the slide. You can check in our website examples of public procurers that have already done pre commercial procurements on default different topics. We have more than 20 in the field of healthcare alone.

**[10:45] Speaker A:** Important to mention as well that this research and development does not fall under the normal public procurement rules.

**[10:52] Speaker A:** Procurement Directive doesn't fall either under international public procurement agreements, which means that we can put some specific requirements to support European strategic autonomy, meaning that the procurements can be limited where needed to companies coming from Europe and associated countries to the Horizon program, stimulating developing an even wider commercialization of the solutions afterwards in Europe. If we move to the next slides, we will look now at the conditions for participation. If you want to write the proposal, what do you need to do to be eligible? Well, first of all you need minimum three independent legal entities from three different countries, either EU member states or associated countries to the Horizon Europe Programme.

**[11:42] Speaker A:** And because these projects focus on supporting joint procurements, we need minimum two of these three participants to be public procurers from two different countries, one of which must be from an EU member state. Can other buyers that are not public buyers participate in the projects? Yes, they can. Buyers can improve. For example, private hospitals can include other also NGOs or other type of beneficiaries that want to join.

**[12:15] Speaker A:** Anybody can in fact be in the proposal as the beneficiary, except for potential suppliers of the solutions, because that would create a potential conflict of interest when they would be preparing and running a procurement that they would also later would like to apply for. If you are not a potential supplier for the procurement and you are not a buyer, you can still participate in a project, for example as a consultant or any other type of entity that need to assist the buyers in preparing or running the procurement or in doing for example dissemination activities. They are welcome to participate as beneficiaries. We can move to next slide.

**[13:00] Speaker A:** Looking further in what are the roles of the different actors that participate in these projects. We need of course, a buyer group. Those will be the procurers that will be launching the procurement together and financing the companies that win the procurement contracts. As it needs to be a joint procurement, we need somebody to take the lead in this buyers group and that will be the lead procurer. If there are any other beneficiaries in the project, you will have to identify them, as we say, that can help in other related activities of the project.

**[13:34] Speaker A:** And what about the suppliers? Very important to keep in mind that they will not become beneficiaries of the project. They do not enter our grant agreement, but the buyers and other beneficiaries of the projects will engage with them through the preliminary market consultation. And of course, when they will start launching the procurement, reaching out the market, and therefore, at that moment they will start engaging more in detail with those suppliers who will be making offers and winning procurement contracts. Let's look to the next slide where we will address the eligible activities in the proposal. We want to see what is the challenge that the procurers want to address with this procurement project, which need in the healthcare field, which challenges in specific areas you want to address and why it requires innovation, why the existing solutions in the market cannot address your need, and what quality and efficiency improvements you are looking for that you want the project to focus on.

**[14:44] Speaker A:** Once you will start preparing the proposal, you will also see that the proposal template asks you to specify which type of activities you plan to do in the preparation stage. So before you launch the procurement and which activities you will do in the execution stage of the project. In the preparation stage, like we said, you will be doing an open market consultation to consult the market to see if it is realistic that you prepare the tender specification in a direction or in another. The outcome of this preparation stage will be that the buyers group will have finalized the tender specifications and their cooperation agreement on how they will implement the joint procurement.

**[15:29] Speaker A:** Once that's done, they will start executing it. So during the execution stage, you will have the procurement of the R and D with the different stages of designing, testing and so on. You will be validating whether the solutions perform according to requirement and you can also start afterwards doing the dissemination and exploitation. And if needed, also during the project, you can start other ancillary activities such as contributing to a standardization or to regulation. If you are, for example, developing a totally new solution and the regulation is not available for it yet, you can start interacting with regulators.

**[16:09] Speaker A:** Of course, you could check already during the preparation stage. If we could phrase the requirements in a concrete way, would that fit the regulatory framework or not? Also you can contribute to activities that will facilitate the commercialization afterwards, like certification and very important also training you are developing new solutions. The people who need to work with them are not aware yet on how to deal with these new innovations in their working environment. So you can include training even in these additional activities.

**[16:43] Speaker A:** And also preparing a follow up procurement is also an activity that can be funded in these additional activities. And it's important for you to be aware that pre commercial procurement are funded with 100% whereas public procurement of innovation is funded with 70%.

**[17:01] Speaker A:** So if you preparing a follow up procurement and the pre commercial procurement is more interesting from the perspective of the funding that you would get. If we go to the next slide, we see this more graphically how the funding is also divided in the bottom of the slide. Since it's a project where the main aim is to fund the joint procurement, a large portion of the budget will be dedicated to the part shown here in blue, to the actual procurement cost to buy the R and D of new solutions and to all the testing and so on.

**[17:37] Speaker A:** But of course the green part show all the surrounding activities that I was mentioning that will start with the preparing the procurement and all the activities that I mentioned can be done afterwards like dissemination, follow up procurements, preparation and so on. Next slide please. This slide is linked to the payment of the project. You will get in the beginning a pre financing to start the project and the preparation activities and then after the first review an additional refinancing to cover the bigger cost so the procurement costs that are coming so you don't need to upfront all the cost yourself. Important is that as the main scope of the project is the procurement, at least 50% of all the costs that you foresee need to be spent on the procurement.

**[18:27] Speaker A:** Indirect costs are also foreseen. Next slide. It's covering the deployment options. So first of all an option could be that you already want to deploy the solutions that are going to be developed as part of the pro commercial procurement. If you want to do that, you must foresee the budget for that in the proposal.

**[18:51] Speaker A:** The budget to already be able to buy a solution from at least one supplier. Obviously if the pre commercial procurement delivers good quality solutions. In that case, please remember that the procurement needs to remain R and D procurement. So any supplies that you buy during a pre commercial procurement cannot cost more than half of the procurement cost itself. Because otherwise we would not be talking anymore about an R and D procurement.

**[19:23] Speaker A:** If the other Option, you don't want to buy solutions during the pre commercial procurement. You can also buy them afterwards during a separate follow up procurement where there would be two scenarios. If it is exactly the same set of procurers that want to buy only the limited set of solutions that were produced during the pre commercial procurement, they can buy them with a simpler procedure, a negotiated procedure, without publication from the suppliers that were in the pre commercial procurement. If it's a new set of procurers, for example a large group of buyers that want to buy solutions, or you want to buy larger solutions or larger volumes of solutions or solutions that were changed or adapted or improved after, then you need to do a new procurement that is again openly published according to procurement rules. In the case that you already have a commitment to buy solutions during the project, you can use what we call a fast track pre commercial procurement that is shown in the picture that you see in the slide.

**[20:33] Speaker A:** In that case you don't need to use three phases for the pre commercial procurement. You can do all the development and testing that is normally doing in phases two and three. You can do it all together in one phase phase to speed up the whole process. You have also the combination of two options where you could buy a limited set of solutions during the pre commercial procurement and then buy a wider set of solutions afterwards. Now we are going to move to the next slide on the applicable rules and guidance. And this is a very important slide because it provides you with many links that can help you. I'm passing to you a lot of information this morning. In these slides you have a lot of material to help you better understand the instrument, obtaining more information about how it works, the general annexes of the work program explaining all the additional requirements for pre commercial procurement actions.

**[21:36] Speaker A:** There are also guidance documents, frequently asked questions and so on. You can find additional information about how does our model grant agreement look like?

**[21:47] Speaker A:** If you will win a project, you will have to sign that model grant agreement. So it's very interesting, the application form that you can see next to this yellow box there, we can move to the next slide precisely with a bit more of information on the application form. And actually you should download the application form for the pre commercial procurement action because it really goes through exactly everything that you need to fill in in the different fields in the application form to submit your proposal. It's a kind of checklist reminding you what you don't have to forget. It's not in the website itself when you go and submit your proposal.

**[22:33] Speaker A:** So I really encourage you to to download to print it and put it close to you when you are submitting your proposal to ensure that you don't forget anything. Next slide, please.

**[22:46] Speaker A:** So, in concrete, it's extremely important when you prepare a proposal and submit that you understand the instrument, its purpose and how to implement it correctly. As I said, we are addressing barriers with this instrument. It's not a traditional Errone grant. You need to have a strong focus on the clinical procurement need that you want to satisfy and not on the technologies to be developed by eventual suppliers. You need to include very clear objectives with good descriptions on how they will be measured and achieved.

**[23:19] Speaker A:** You need to demonstrate an excellent understanding of the market landscape and the potential challenges for adoption. Of course, provide all the necessary details on how the project will achieve its expected impact and present also the realistic risks and sufficient mitigation strategies. Next slide, please. Once you have submitted the proposal, we move to the next phase, which is the evaluation of what you have submitted. So I think it's quite important for you to know how this evaluation will apply, in particular for a procurement project.

**[23:56] Speaker A:** It's important to understand that we are looking at evaluation from the perspective of a procurement project. So what will the evaluators look at? Well, of course, how excellent is the proposal, meaning how clear and how pertinent? Have you described the objectives of what you want to achieve with your procurement project? To which extent you are really ambitious enough to justify that you really need to invest in research and development and that you are going to go beyond what already exists in the market with this procurement?

**[24:30] Speaker A:** We have also to ensure that the methodology that you are proposing to implement this research and development procurement project is sound on the impact criteria? Let's imagine that the R and D procurement turns out perfectly. It's implemented optimally during the project. What kind of impact could it have in the procurers itself to achieve the expected impacts they want to achieve, but also the impacts defined by us in the topic in our work program relating to the modernization of public services or addressing societal challenges, and also helping suppliers, including small actors, to bring their solutions to the market. So the evaluators will also look not only at what are the impacts that you say you are going to achieve, but also how realistic are the measures that you describe in the proposal to try to achieve those impacts.

**[25:26] Speaker A:** Do you have a dissemination exploitation plan that looks credible and sufficient communication activities? When we talk about exploitation plan, here is how you, as public buyers, are going to plan to make the use of these innovative solutions. How would you use them to create an impact? You are Wanting to achieve as a public buyer on improving your services, for example, and the last evaluation criteria, very important as well, we look at the quality and efficiency of the implementation, how your plan is realistic, how it is of high quality, will it be effective? Will all the participants that you have in consortium have the capacity to do all this work? And is it clear which role each of them will do in this consortium to get all these tasks done? Will they have the necessary resources? So when you write a proposal, please take into account that these are the things that the evaluators will be looking for.

**[26:27] Speaker A:** So make sure that these aspects are clearly described. Next slide please, with some key principles in mind to keep just as a summary. When you submit a project, make sure that you propose does fit the scope of the topic that we are calling for. Demonstrate that what you want to do goes beyond the state of the art, so that evaluators understand that R and D is needed here, that it does not yet exist as the solution or the needs you are trying to satisfy in the market, that something new needs to be developed and tested. Show how your project contributes to the expected outcomes and impacts that are in the work program so that you respond really to the goal and describe how you plan to achieve those impacts. Not just I will improve the work on this, but how do I plan to do it.

**[27:21] Speaker A:** Demonstrate also the quality of how you plan to organize your activities, who are the beneficiaries, which resources you plan to use, and also the budgetary implementation aspect so that it is clear to the evaluators.

**[27:36] Speaker A:** We can move further because I have included several slides that can help you more in detail with the different criteria that will be evaluated.

**[27:46] Speaker A:** But you can look at this after I propose we move to the last. Well, just the slide before the end, so still farther, further and the next which is the last? Yes, this one. Thank you.

**[28:03] Speaker A:** This is a slide about how to finding you to help partners. And this slide gives you several possibilities to look at. We have the partner search functionality. You just go to the topic, the participant portal that you want to apply on the funding and tenders portal and that you will find messages from other people potentially. You can also look at ongoing or completed pre commercial procurements that have been funded in the past by the European Union or Member States, that there are some of them on our website.

**[28:33] Speaker A:** If you are wanting to do a project in an area where others have already done something, maybe they would be interested. And there are also some countries that have national competence centers that promote innovation procurement to public buyers and help them start those Projects also at national level. So you could contact those also national contact points in general are very helpful and this was my last slide. Of course you will be able to ask questions and I hope you are already doing and we will address them at the end.

**[29:07] Speaker A:** Now I will pass the floor to my colleague Basilis Sanidit who will give you a few more details on how you can be supported to implement pre commercial procurement projects from the perspective and the support of the European Innovation Council.

**[29:25] Speaker A:** So the floor is with you.

**[29:28] Speaker C:** Thank you. Thank you very much. Carmen, good morning. From my side, actually you've heard a very detailed presentation on pre commercial procurements and the calls that are coming in the next period.

**[29:46] Speaker C:** What I can say is that.

**[29:55] Speaker C:** If you implement, if you participate in these calls and you implement a pre commercial procurement funded through these calls, you'll have three different wins. The first win is of course that you will be able to.

**[30:13] Speaker C:** Develop innovative solutions that are tackling exactly your needs, also taking into account the costs of the developed solutions. The second win is that as you will see also in my presentation, because at EIC level we are focusing on the supply side, you will be able to facilitate the access to innovative players In Europe, innovators, SMEs and startups to access procurement markets. So you are offering them business opportunities through these pre commercial procurements. And the third win is again for you because you will reinforce your capability to do innovation procurements, pre commercial procurements and public procurements of innovative solutions. We heard about the first slides of Carmen, about the momentum, about the reports of Fleta, the reports of Drake, how important innovation procurement is, and of course the European Innovation act that was recently adopted by the Commission on the 9th of September.

**[31:17] Speaker C:** So you understand that your organizations have to be start position themselves as important players when it comes to innovation procurement. So this is a fantastic opportunity to be able to enhance your capabilities also in implementing innovation procurements. Next slide please. So as I mentioned, I come from the European Innovation Council and actually we do believe we are supporting mainly the top notch innovators across Europe. But we don't stop there. We are providing extra support to facilitate the access of these innovators to procurement markets in Europe, but also at a global level. That's why we consider that it is important to establish an innovation procurement program that aims both the demand and the supply side. Next slide please.

**[32:18] Speaker C:** So, no, no, I mean like it's the slide 29 that we passed.

**[32:24] Speaker D:** Vasilis, sorry for interrupting you. I just wanted to tell Charlotte. Charlotte, if you can put enable editing on your Screen and share the presentation in present in full presentation mode. Because we could see all the slides quite small.

**[32:40] Speaker D:** I don't know if you hear me.

**[32:43] Speaker C:** Yeah, just to.

**[32:44] Speaker E:** I do hear you. What? What? Enable what?

**[32:48] Speaker D:** The presentation mode. Because the way you share it now it's not in presentation mode and the slides are still small.

**[32:54] Speaker E:** It was in presentation mode before and then someone's. Is it visible now?

**[32:59] Speaker D:** No, now you removed it completely. Can you try again.

**[33:13] Speaker E:** From current slide? Sorry for the interaction like this.

**[33:18] Speaker D:** We don't see any presentation at all right now. Okay.

**[33:39] Speaker E:** Yeah, I don't. I mean I'm sharing and this is not showing so I don't know what to. Wait, I can share again.

**[33:48] Speaker E:** Share window master slides. Here we are. Do you see it now?

**[33:55] Speaker C:** Yes, yes, yes. If you add a presentation mode.

**[34:00] Speaker D:** So yes, if you go on your screen. Yeah, there exactly one on the bottom.

**[34:08] Speaker E:** Is it good now?

**[34:09] Speaker F:** Okay.

**[34:09] Speaker C:** Yes. No, not yet, but I think it will come good so very quickly because we don't have much. So much time.

**[34:17] Speaker C:** Just to let you know that as mentioned, the European innovation counseling is focusing on the supply side. We are supporting through different funding schemes, Pathfinder Transition and Accelerator following the different stages of the innovation lifecycle. The innovators, top notch innovators across Europe. But we are supporting also the scaling up through different extra support programs. And one of them is the innovation recruitment program that has activities both for the demand and the supply side.

**[34:52] Speaker C:** We do believe in EIC and from innovators point of view that the more innovation procurements are happening in Europe, the more business opportunities are open to startups and SMEs. That's why of course we have put in place a lot of activities for the supply side. But we have an importance for the demand side which is the assistance to public buyers. So we are supporting public buyers to carry out innovation procurement. But a caveat I need to highlight that it is we are offering this support not for EU funded projects because that would be double financing. We are offering this support for pre commercial procurements, public procurements of innovative solutions, innovation procurements in general that are happening outside the EU funding territory. So that's why you have. We are presenting you this opportunity in case you are interested in any case to do a pre commercial procurement or public procurement of innovative solution on innovation procurement.

**[35:57] Speaker C:** Next slide please.

**[36:01] Speaker C:** Because we do believe a lot at European Innovation Council that the achievements speak on themselves and it's better to speak with success cases or case examples. This is a case example of a public buyer in this case Lombardy region that actually is receiving assistance by us by the European Innovation Council to carry out an innovation procurement, a public procurement of innovative solutions to buy innovative solutions in the area of diagnostic imaging and radiotherapy. They have received support to carry out a business case to do a market consultation and of course they did a pilot with an EIC beneficiary from the Netherlands. So you understand that we are trying also to look at European perspective and not only at national perspective. Next slide please.

**[37:02] Speaker C:** And as said, one of the three wins of innovation procurements also carried out in the context of the EU funded project is the impact that you have for innovators here. It's a great case example from a EU funded PCP pre commercial procurement where 3.3 million tender with a group of buyers. As you mentioned and as you have heard from Carmen, we need a European dimension in these EU funded PCPs from hospitals from Italy, Portugal, Spain, Poland and the UK published a joint cross border pre commercial procurement. The result was one EIC beneficiary replied to this call, received assistance also from US and has been awarded a phase one contract, a phase two contract, a phase three contract and this SME, my sphere SME, an EIC beneficiary now is fund after this PCP has also managed to be a supplier in hospitals outside of the countries of these buyers in Bulgaria, but also now is expanding also beyond Europe.

**[38:28] Speaker C:** So you understand that by doing a pre commercial procurement you don't tackle only your needs, but also you give the opportunity for European SMEs to scale up and to find market opportunities in Europe, but also at the global level. Next slide please.

**[38:51] Speaker C:** Here you have some QR codes where you can find more information about these specific activities and you can register if you would like to receive procurement assistance for your own innovation procurements. I highlight this Next slide please. And I finish with this slide because we are teaming up with the European Assistance for Innovation Procurement a newly again a renewed activity of DTRDT that also provides assistance to public buyers to to carry out innovation procurement. I have to underline that this assistance is free of cost for you. There is nothing to.

**[39:30] Speaker C:** I mean like it's offered for free in order with the aim to have more and better innovation procurements happening in Europe. So don't hesitate to receive assistance in case you are interested to do innovation procurements. And I finish my presentation by encourage you to participate in this PCP call that was explained earlier to Carmen. It is now the moment for public buyers to actually start positioning themselves as makers of innovation in Europe. Because the power now is in your hands in order to be able to develop innovative solutions that are tackling exactly your needs.

**[40:15] Speaker C:** That's all on my side.

**[40:19] Speaker C:** Thank you very much again and good luck with the submission of the proposals.

**[40:27] Speaker A:** Thanks a lot Vasilis. Thanks for all this additional information on how support can be obtained. And now it is my pleasure to introduce Mark van de Bulk, head of service in Sano, who has a lot of experience as a procurer in innovation procurement and in particular in pre commercial procurement projects. Projects. And it's going to give you some the perspective of a procurer in the use of this instrument. Mark, the floor is with you.

**[41:03] Speaker A:** We cannot hear you Mark.

**[41:07] Speaker G:** Now it should be fine. So thank you very much. Kaiman and I would first of all like to thank you the commission that but it gives us the opportunity to present a little bit our experience on encourages. I will not go into detail what we have likely done, but mainly focus on the experience. And I think if I hear you, Carmen explaining and then Vasilis also explaining a little bit, you get the impression that it's a very complex process.

**[41:34] Speaker G:** And indeed when we started we had the same thing. But basically what it's about is that there is some need that you have that is not fulfilled for the moment in the market. And a solution would be that you prepare together with some partners a tender and you ask the market to develop, to do the research and the develop to answer to your needs. That's in essence what the PCP is about. And the next slide we are working. I'm coming from the cancer world and as you know, cancer is still one of the major disease and burdens of disease in Europe. It's also why Europe has taken up the European beating cancer plan and the mission on cancer. But we with the ONCO NGS PCP we were a little bit earlier because in Belgium we had introduced next generation sequencing as a diagnostic tool to better understand what mutations and changes have been taken up in a tumor that was put into the healthcare system.

**[42:32] Speaker G:** But we were not able to develop the more complex profiling because that was too expensive. And also the technology is quite complex.

**[42:41] Speaker G:** So that's where the next slide I started within the network to find some partners and I traveled to Italy, to Spain, to France, to Germany. And we were able in the next slide to set up a consortium of eight buyers in five countries. I think Carmen indicated that there are different ways to get into contact with people. I think the face to face interaction is a very important important because I must say when we started, when I Started to visit. There was in fact nobody who understood what the PCP was about.

**[43:22] Speaker G:** So it's important then to discuss and at least set a common, let's say, need that you can define. And you see here the partners. So there are in five multiple hospitals. It's mainly hospitals, research institutes associated with hospitals. And in the next slide, we defined together in fact the need.

**[43:44] Speaker G:** So the need was that we saw is that large panels were very expensive. We all said that it's not only for care, but also for research.

**[43:54] Speaker G:** So you have to harmonize also your data outputs to be able to learn from it. And then it's dealing, focusing on personalized medicine, where we try to give the right treatment to the right person at the right time. The next slide, you see that the challenge that you set has to be enough innovative because you have to think several years ahead.

**[44:18] Speaker G:** And I must say with ONCO ngs, we just finished this year, it's due a little bit also delay that was happening with COVID but you have to think almost 10 years ahead to say, look, that will be still needed on the market. And what we put as an R and D challenge is to develop a liquid biopsy test, which at that time was really still, still quite innovative. The next slide, I think there is a whole list now of parameters that I will skip so you can go to the next slide. But we set in the challenge and you said we want to have it in pan cancer. So several cancers has to be covered, has to be in blood, liquid biopsy.

**[44:59] Speaker G:** You have to be able to do the profiling, you have to have an IT decision support system that is harmonizing and allowing us to have a harmonized interpretation and reporting. And this was all in one solution that we asked to the market to develop. And that was quite, quite challenging and was also quite innovative. And the next slide, this was quite a complex project. So we not only buyers, we also had what they call the supporting entities.

**[45:29] Speaker G:** So we had the pleasure. And actually, I must say it was our colleagues from Aquas, from Barcelona, and especially Rosanna Alessandrelo, who teached us what PCP is about. And I think it took several rounds of explanation and trying to explain what the PCP asked. But at a certain moment you realize it's a tender and then it works fine. But they also helped us in the pcp, in the HTA aspects of the pcp and also now in the follow up of a ppi.

**[45:59] Speaker G:** Then we had the cancer control information from the inka, from the National Cancer Institute of France. We had An IP body that took care of assessing the IP aspects. We had the Cancer Register to give us an idea, the Belgium Cancer Register to give us an idea on what the data should look like. And then we had also two research institute, VEO and ipsa, to help us to think how this test could also, or this solution could also be used in research. Then the next slide, There is the objectives and the areas of improvement that we had defined. So we wanted to have versatility, modularity, it had to be upgradable because the world changes rapidly, it should be cost efficient. So we set a price fork and I think at that time we had discussions with the commission because that was not really always the case that you do that, but in discussion with the supporting entities.

**[46:59] Speaker G:** So with the private sector, they were very happy in the end that you set the price fork, because that gives you an indication about what the solution may cost to the system. Because in the end you have to put it into the healthcare system and you can make a solution that is very, very good. But if it's not affordable, it will not be implemented.

**[47:18] Speaker G:** And what we wanted to have high performance had to be relatively smooth to integrate it should of course be very secure, it must be affordable. And it had a clinical application. And the next phase is then the call itself. So the call was opened, I think in 2019 and we applied to it and we got a budget. The next slide, please.

**[47:46] Speaker G:** Yeah, we got a budget of about 12 million. And as 90% at that time was still commission, only reimbursed 90%. Now it has gone up to 100%. And this is the challenge that we put to an integrated solution for testing, analyzing and reporting and storage of NGS medical data within routine healthcare diagnostics in oncology. And the next slide, we started then the project, we won the project.

**[48:18] Speaker G:** So we got the call, we got the proposal passed and the first thing you have to do is prepare your tender. And there indeed there was this discussion with the stakeholders. So you need to have a good interaction with stakeholders. You have to get information from the supply chain and also what is important is information from the payers, so the ones who will in the end help you in putting the system into action, into the healthcare system itself. The next slide is then the outcomes.

**[48:48] Speaker G:** It's a long process, it's a complicated process. But we got in the end, and I must say, but that's maybe too far. We had to do it twice, the whole opening of the. Of the tenders in the beginning. But in the end we got seven offers and then in the first phase, you select four who provide you the design of their solution. You select three of that that can go to into a prototype, and then the last two they go into clinical assessment. And we had two companies that finally made it till the end. We had Agilent Technologies, okay, who is based in Belgium, but is mainly an American company. But we were very happy and proud of course, that we had also a Belgium partner that made it till the end. And actually it's a Belgian partner with a Flemish and a Walloon organization.

**[49:33] Speaker G:** So it's a true federated approach. And both Agilent and Onco DNA have been put our solution already in the market as an R and D option. The next slide is then showing you the process and you see that in the phase zero, that is the preparation of the tender. There is a lot of things that you have have to do. I can tell you. We spent almost two years on that. It's due partially to Covid and also due to Covid, we were forced to do all these meetings online. I'm pretty sure that if it would have been face to face, it would have been easier. But in the end, our purchase department said they never had a tender that was so well prepared as this one. And then you have the three phases where you see also a little bit how much we paid. I think, no, it's not in there.

**[50:24] Speaker G:** So. But there's a budget in the beginning that is gradually increasing towards the third phase. And also you see the partners that have been winning and been out. So the next phase, so the process is quite complex. It takes long. It took us six years in total. But in the end, on the next slide, what did we achieve? First of all, we made it till the end, which in itself is already an achievement because it's a very long and very, very complex initiative. We were able to test the solutions at the pilot sites. So that's also a very important element so that you get real, real hospital data. All the buyers increase their capacity and understanding of public procurement. We developed some tools that can be reused and I can tell you, our partners, we are preparing for the next call already for another application.

**[51:18] Speaker G:** So it's something that you, you keep as an asset in your organization. And it's definitely a PCP is if you have a good solution, in the end, it's an opportunity to then step into the next set, which is the procurement of public innovation.

**[51:36] Speaker G:** That is the next step of implementation that we're now also pursuing. Then the next slide, it was published, that was also something that our partners were Very much appreciated. And it was published in the European Society of Molecular. So it had a broad exposure. The next slide is that some lessons that we draw.

**[52:01] Speaker G:** So we think that in the end, once you understand the system, the PCP is something that is really a useful and effective format to do something it allows. And that's also feedback that we get from the, from the supporting entities. So from the private sector, when you write such a detailed unmet need for them, it's also much easier to respond to the demand of the sector. We hope that we get it. The PCP will facilitate the introduction of liquid biopsy into the healthcare systems. I must say we are closely now associated with some of the parallel initiatives in the mission and in the.

**[52:45] Speaker G:** The plan, the European Beating Cancer Plan to get it implemented into the healthcare system. You learn from the buyers so you see how this understanding of the emerging technology can be introduced. We were with the. Actually we were very surprised that both the final, let's say support solutions were really innovative to an extent that they introduced technologies that at the beginning we never heard about. So it was really a process of innovation.

**[53:15] Speaker G:** And you get the opportunity through these solutions to have a standardized, structured assessment of clinical applications in different member states, different hospitals. And the last slide I think that

**[53:29] Speaker H:** I have

**[53:32] Speaker G:** is the challenges. I think in the beginning it was the buyer group. You need a consortium that is very committed. And I think for us it was sometimes in the beginning of the process very harsh because it was in the COVID and it was not really easy to have the face to face meetings. So because you need to have an alignment of the priorities of all the buyers, the need definition is also very important.

**[54:01] Speaker G:** How better you define that, how better you will get a response from the sector. And also the open market consultations, they allow you actually to. We are. We were probably much too ambitious. We're still very ambitious, but we were even more.

**[54:15] Speaker G:** And the market put that down. So this interaction with the market is very important. And then the whole running of the procurement is a complex process. So you need people that are really well aware and you need a good interaction also with your purchase department in your organization, in the multiple organizations. And I think also to be able to bring data together, you need also good interactions with the DPOs and the data management systems in each of the buyers, in our case hospitals.

**[54:47] Speaker G:** And I think that was my last slide. The next slide is just. I would like to thank all of the partners. There's too many to list, but it was really a great experience and I think I must Say that the group of people that started this project together is still together and in many different projects we stay together. Thank you very much.

**[55:11] Speaker A:** Thanks a lot, Mark, for all this encouragement and having presented this instrument as a really instrument that can bring many added value to an organization as procurer, even if it seems complicated from the onset. But thanks a lot for all those encouragements. So now it is my pleasure to pass the floor to my colleagues Kay Dugan Waltz and Jan William Bandel, who are going to provide more specific details about one of the two PCPs in concrete. The pre commercial procurement of affordable solutions for healthcare systems in the areas of cancer technologies, cancer medical devices or cancer medicines. Please.

**[55:59] Speaker E:** Good morning. I'm going to give you a quick overview of the Cancer mission and Jan will talk about the topic that's in the 27 work program. So the next slide please, please.

**[56:11] Speaker E:** And the next one, yes. So you may be aware that there are two initiatives on cancer in European Commission linking research and health. So the first one was the Europe's Beating Cancer Plan which started in February 2021. And then we had the cancer mission in September 2021 also. And then there's also the Beca committee in the European Parliament. They had a resolution on strengthening Europe in the fight against cancer and this was in February 2022. So we have two, those two initiatives are linking research and health. So the next slide please.

**[56:49] Speaker E:** So why do we have a cancer mission? So the challenge is that there are 2.7 million people diagnosed with cancer each year and 1.3 million die from cancer in the EU. So the total cost of cancer in Europe is in 202018 was 199 billion and that's set to grow. And the impact of COVID 19 also has an impact on cancer diagnosis. So the goal of the Cancer mission is to improve the lives of more than 3 million by 2030 through prevention, cure and for those affected by cancer, including their families, to live longer and better.

**[57:25] Speaker E:** And in the Cancer mission we work jointly with the Europe's Beating Cancer Plan. So there are four objectives of the Cancer mission. Understanding cancer, cancer prevention and early detection, diagnosis and treatment and quality of life. And then we have also 19 RNI priority areas and five transversal priorities that you can see there. So the Cancer mission runs from 2021 to 2030 and to date we have invested 605 million in cancer projects.

**[57:54] Speaker E:** So here on the right hand side, at the side we have some achievements. We have a governance to support the work with member states and stakeholders and we work with the Cancer Mission Board which enables policy feedback Loop the Cancer Mission Hubs are being set up in member states and associated countries. We have a lot of engagement with citizens. We're setting up the uncanned data platform. We have a blueprint published and use cases have started.

**[58:22] Speaker E:** Then the network of comprehensive cancer infrastructures has been started and the Cancer Patient Digital Centre, a blueprint was also published and the information portal has started. And we have launched 75 projects and these four flagship initiatives as well. And we have a lot of synergies eu, nationally, regionally and at local level. Next slide please.

**[58:49] Speaker E:** So we have governance and engagement arrangements at the national level. We have the network of national Cancer Mission Hub hubs which facilitate integration of EU actions at national, region and local levels through stakeholder engagement and cross policy dialogues. And this is supported by the ECOS project from 2023 to 2026 and now a second phase has started. Then we have a joint governance with the Europe's Beating Cancer Plan where we have a dialogue with health and research ministries and they meet on a regular basis. We have mobilization of a broad range of stakeholders and then there's also coordination within the European Commission Services on cancer.

**[59:33] Speaker E:** And then at the international level we have areas of cooperation in understanding rare cancers, patient centered clinical trials on refractory cancers screening and early detection. And we also have ongoing cooperation with the U.S. on the cancer moonshot, pediatric cancer lung cancer screening and recently with Japan on young cancer patient survivors. And the next slide please.

**[1:00:00] Speaker E:** So here this is just give you a summary of the governance engagements that we have done. So we have a dialogue with the member states. We have the SPC Cancer Working Group where we discuss the mission work program. And as I mentioned, we have the subgroup on Cancer where we work with the cancer Mission, Europe's breeding Cancer Plan, the research and health ministries together. Then we have an E cancer group which is implementing the digital platforms and I mentioned national cancer mission hubs and they're creating hubs in each member state and associated country.

**[1:00:36] Speaker E:** And then all these hubs will build a network. And we've had the second implementation report on missions was published in September 2026 which is monitoring all of the missions. And then we have a lot of stakeholder engagement. We have the mission clusters where we bring projects that are funded at the same time, bring them together and we organize policy webinars and we focus on the four cancer mission objectives in these clusters. And then for outreach we had three mission conferences during EU presidencies in Poland, Denmark and Cyprus.

**[1:01:10] Speaker E:** And we also have a mission Newsletter, we organize information days and we have a dialogue with young cancer survivors and five workshops and a conference starting in January 23rd until March 26th has been organized. And we had a very successful bus roadshow in the summer of 2024. And then the Cancer Mission board members, they are ambassadors in their own countries and they engage nationally. And recently we organized a stakeholder group working on rare cancer. So the Rare Cancer Forum has been set up with board members involved.

**[1:01:48] Speaker E:** And the next slide, please.

**[1:01:53] Speaker E:** So just to give you some more information on the national Cancer Mission hubs, they're established in member states and associated countries and the objective is uniting efforts and accelerating research and innovation and EU policy actions on cancer, cancer prevention, cancer care and quality of life of cancer survivors and carriers by fostering collaboration, dialogues and partnerships between diverse stakeholders, including policymakers, healthcare professionals, researchers, business patients and citizens. And there have been a number of hubs which are operational in these countries. And hubs are also being set up in 2026 and 2027. And the echoes project organized cancer mission fairs. One in Poland in May 25, Cyprus in April 2026.

**[1:02:41] Speaker E:** And they're planning to have one in lithuania in spring 27. And the next slide I think is yes.

**[1:02:49] Speaker E:** So this is on the topic on pre commercial procurement. And I'll hand over to Jan. Thank you.

**[1:03:02] Speaker H:** Thanks a lot. Kay. Good morning everyone. So I'll do my best to take you through this cancer mission topic which is focused on PCP pre commercial procurement. And it was nicely explained why the Cancer Mission is going in this direction and why we have actually more and more of those actions that let's say would try to scale certain solutions, would try to really tackle some of the healthcare challenges we see in oncology. And okay, let's say at least we are starting. So this PCP topic is one of those actions. We have a budget of 26 million. So actually it was increased because of what seems to be a high request from various organizations and stakeholders after and during discussions with member states. So.

**[1:04:01] Speaker H:** So more or less we expect that we can support with this budget about three projects. But again, as we have seen before, it depends really on the budget are going to be requested by the successful applicants for this topic. So we have to see. So it was already explained what pre commercial procurement is. It's a very different beast than what we typically support in the the health program under Horizon Europe and including in the Cancer Mission.

**[1:04:40] Speaker H:** But as you will see also in the other missions, if you look at the mission work programs, we do things differently. And so this is one of those examples. We do not support funding, as was mentioned, directly to RNI organizations to really perform the rd. This will come later in the tender. That was well explained also by the coordinator of NGS onc.

**[1:05:08] Speaker H:** So we in the topic we state that this is an action that supports the follow up of the first report on the assessment of EU missions. Well, in the meantime, as Kate just mentioned, the missions had to undergo another assessment. So we this was published just like I think four weeks ago, the second assessment report on missions. And you'll see that we have tried to describe more of the results in all these missions and where we are heading for. So in the end take that into account as much as you can. So next slide please.

**[1:05:50] Speaker H:** So in the topic I'm not going to read out everything in detail. You see that as in all the topics in Horizon Europe, we first briefly described the expected outcome and then described the scope that we expect from these successful applicants, from these successful grants. So after the end of this PCP projects, we expect that public procurers will deliver some at least stimulate the development of market ready solutions. And as you have seen, we have tried to keep the topic very, very open. It's very broad.

**[1:06:32] Speaker H:** We did not want absolutely to sort of go for procurement of any or whatever solution. We there are so many things happening and that may need affordable solutions. So we have this topic focusing on technologies, devices, therapeutics, so anything would be possible. So this is not just focusing on diagnostics and diagnosis and treatment. It could also address screening, early detection or any anything else that relates for example to the very important and quickly growing area of quality of life of cancer patients and cancer patient survivors.

**[1:07:13] Speaker H:** So we expect that the solutions will take indeed the needs of these cancer patients, what I just mentioned. So we are really doing a lot on the work with cancer patient survivors. So there is a lot that needs to be procured that potentially is not available at the moment in the markets. It's very important for the Cancer mission citizens being one of the sort of central priorities that run through all these missions that we work with citizens and including that means patient people at risk of cancer, but also cancer patients who live with or beyond their disease, that they are involved through end user engagement using any type of participative research models. You have seen that in previous work programs under the Cancer Mission.

**[1:08:07] Speaker H:** We have used that over and over again and this will be continued in work program 2026. The calls just closed and in work program 2027. And it will also be visible from other actions that Kay Just briefly summarized and other things are ongoing as well where we, we really engage with, with citizen or patients or their representatives. So the other expected outcome is we really want to see new opportunities for, for companies, for the industrial actors to bring these solutions into the market. And it's important again the cancer mission is also about focusing on inequalities.

**[1:08:53] Speaker H:** So we really want to see efforts that go into direction of being cost efficient, safe of course, but also have a demonstrated improved health outcome for cancer patients. So this is, it's very much focusing on, on what really can the patients or people at risk, what they really need. So the procurers facilitate commercialization of these solutions. But again we ask that this be done with cancer patients. So this is one of the typical things that we would do in all these activities.

**[1:09:25] Speaker H:** We want to see that cancer patients are going to be involved in these solutions that are going to be developed in this PCP projects, including the pilots. And of course in the end we, we want to see it was nicely explained in the example and just that the policy makers, the healthcare providers and professionals who, who, who need these solutions really have the information to then adopt good practices and bring that into their healthcare systems again through participative research. Next slide please.

**[1:10:03] Speaker H:** So here we have briefly summarized the scope of this PCB topic. Though as I mentioned, the focus is extremely broad, certainly broader than what we would typically do to really allow any type of important solutions to move forward. So, so again the focus as was explained in the intro, is really about affordable solutions for healthcare systems in the area of cancer technologies, medical devices, cancer medicines, where we really want to see benefit of cancer patients. So there are too many things to mention. But within this topic we want to see then of course the transfer adaptation of the solutions from even other sectors. So that is possible. It doesn't have to be something that starts from scratch, that is sort of specific to the oncology area. It can also come from any other sector that would then be repurposed for cancer into the healthcare system.

**[1:11:15] Speaker H:** The request solutions should be affordable. As we mentioned, they should be clinically validated, piloted, upscaled by the procurers in at least five different countries. Because this is really about coming to, you know, going for European solutions. So we find this very important. So this is, this may be challenging, but we already reduced the number to five. So we hope that this is going to be feasible. Despite the complexities that were again explained in the example, there is a continuous dialogue needed between demand supply side. This was already well explained. So I'm not going to dwell on this. But again, this being a cancer mission, we really have to see the effective involvement of end users. So this could be academia, it could be clinical teams, it could be the cancer patients, it could be an entire hospital, it could be as we also have complete schools for example, when you work with children this is all very well possible, but it is important that this is clear from

**[1:12:26] Speaker G:** and then there

**[1:12:27] Speaker H:** is the usual description for PCPs, so there must be a dialogue with supply side. The procurers are required to organize an open market consultation for launching the procurement and so on and so forth. So next slide please.

**[1:12:46] Speaker H:** Again this for PCP topic is I would say the usual text. So it's important that again under this topic you have the possibility to either deliver solutions through a procedure that procures solutions as part of the PCP or that goes for a second follow up procurement after this pre commercial procurement. This was already explained in the outline by Cabman and also also in the example. So in the first case procurers can implement the project as a fast track pcp. In the second case they must include a delivery that prepares the follow up to this PCB project as was described.

**[1:13:31] Speaker H:** It is important that activities cover the support to national healthcare systems that they mobilize technical assistance and are compelling capacity building to other procurers beyond the project to mainstream PCP implementation and remove obstacles for introducing these solutions for the benefit of cancer patients to be procured in market.

**[1:13:51] Speaker H:** And I would really want to underline for the benefit of cancer patients. So this is very important for us. So we really have to see affordability trying to bring solutions across Europe. So trying to make solutions available across northern, central, southern and Eastern Europe.

**[1:14:15] Speaker H:** Maybe think of coming with solutions that would be amenable to implementation in healthcare systems which are less well developed or rural settings. These kind of solutions I think have our great interests. Next slide please.

**[1:14:34] Speaker H:** And this was my short contribution and thank you very much.

**[1:14:42] Speaker A:** Thanks a lot Jan. Now it is time for the last presentation which will be on the second pre commercial procurement that we are addressing today and it is in the context of the adaptation to climate change Tools and technologies to support Health Adaptation to Climate Change before giving the floor to Rita, just let me mention that we are going to prolong by 10 minutes this webinar in order to be able to answer questions because the presentations are taking longer than foreseen. So we are going to take 10 more minutes. In any case, all the questions that you are sending to us will be added to the frequently asked questions in the participant portals, the ones that we will add address here and the ones that we will not address because unfortunately we will not have the time. So I hope you can stay. If not, don't worry, all the questions will be in the portal.

**[1:15:40] Speaker F:** Rita please thank you Carmen Good morning and thank you for joining this webinar. So I will now present pre Commercial procurement call on tools and technologies to support health adaptation to Climate change. Although this topic is part of the Cluster Health Work Program, this is a co funded call between the cost of health and the emission on adaptation to climate change. So we have already the next slide and I would like to start by giving a bit of context about why it is so important to support development of technologies and tools for climate adaptation and specifically for health adaptation. So I use here the assessments from one of the assessments from Lancet Countdown to illustrate my point.

**[1:16:28] Speaker F:** We know that the climate crisis is also health crisis and this is clearly demonstrated by the figures and facts stated here. I will not go through them because I'm conscious of time, but I would just like to say that last summer in Europe has been a painful reminder of the urgency to act decisively and quickly, and innovation is key to support this action that is urgently needed. Next slide please.

**[1:16:57] Speaker F:** Climate adaptation, resilience and preparedness are a priority for the Commission. The Commission has published in the last seven years a package of policy initiatives that show a strong commitment to tackle the climate crisis and to reduce its impacts. You see here in the Yellow Bubble some examples of what is already ongoing in this area. A very important initiative at European level is the European Climate and Health Observatory. This platform, managed by the EEA DIGISCENT and DG Klima, acts as a public interface that makes resources and knowledge available to a variety of stakeholders.

**[1:17:36] Speaker F:** And I would like also to mention that in the coming months the Commission will present the European Framework and Plan for Climate Resilience. And in the last State of the Union speech, our Presidents announced additional important initiatives, such as for example, the European Heat Wave Plan that will dedicate funding to strengthen the heat resilience of healthcare systems and also of population. So research and innovation can provide a very important support for many of these actions. But we need to find an effective way to make this work and this is where instruments like the one we are talking about today can bring a lot of additional value value. Next slide.

**[1:18:21] Speaker F:** So from the perspective of research policy, I would like to highlight the Strategy for the European Life Sciences, which was published in 2025. The aim of the strategy is to strengthen the position and leadership of Europe in life sciences research and innovation. It highlights different priority areas for life sciences in Europe and climate change and health is one of these priority areas. This is translated into a flagship that has two concrete actions that we are now putting in motion. The first one is the implementation of a strategic research and innovation agenda that was published in June 2025.

**[1:18:59] Speaker F:** And the second second action is the establishment of a collaborative collaboration, a collaborative platform between research research funders that are working at global level in climate change and health, resulting directly from the implementation of the strategic and innovation agenda. And we have in the work program of Destination 2 of cluster health in 2026 and 2027 five topics fully dedicated to climate change and health with a budget of 170 million euros. And this PCP is one of these topics. Next slide Before I move to talk specifically about the pcp, I just want to very briefly mention the work of international organizations such as WHO that also provide an important context solutions that can be developed under this pcp. Here I mentioned two key initiatives, very recent ones. At the end of May the WHO Pan European Commission on Climate and Health called for the climate crisis to be recognized as a public health emergency of international concern.

**[1:20:07] Speaker F:** And in June this year the WHO Regional Office for Europe published second edition of the Hitel Section Plan Guidance which provides a framework for heat health action planning and is organized around eight core elements that are here represented in the figure. You cannot read them probably, but if you zoom in after, you can see what they are referring to. Next slide.

**[1:20:36] Speaker F:** This slide shows the figures on the research portfolio on Environment, Climate Health across framework programs of research and innovation starting in FP5. You can see that 700 projects were funded with a new contribution of 3 billion euros. So this provides also an impressive pool of knowledge that we hope can support somehow and accelerate the development of the solutions that will be needed in this area and that will be tackled by this pcp. Next slide so we published already the Horizon in Europe goals of the health cluster in 2026. Now here in this slide you can see the calls for the Work Program 2027.

**[1:21:21] Speaker F:** You have here in the right side of the slide the PCP that I'm talking about. Now on tools and technologies to support health adaptation to climate change. You can see that the call closes on 17th February 2027. It has a total budget of 20 million euros and the expected project size is 4 to 5 million euros. Next so what do we expect to achieve with espcp?

**[1:21:49] Speaker F:** We are funding the development of solutions that can support the health resilience and adaptation to climate change of healthcare systems, also of populations and also of communities, or all, all of them together. And we expect that these innovations, these solutions, technologies that will be supported by this PCP will accelerate and support the transition to more CL resilient healthcare systems and societies. Next slide.

**[1:22:23] Speaker F:** More specifically, we are supporting the development of climate technologies, tools, models, decision support frameworks such as early warning systems and other solutions that can be used for climate surveillance. So for example, I will provide some examples that help illustrate what could be under scope. For example, in the case of climate surveillance it can be the development of mosquito traps increase the predictive capacity to support climate preparedness, also to help populations to adopt preventive measures so to protect themselves, for example from exposures to heat, to be able to reduce the risk of exposures to climate extremes. Diagnosis is also included in scope with for example an increase of testing capacities, solutions to increase the climate resilience of health care facilities and technologies that increase the capacity to monitor the exposure and exposure can include also environmental aspects that are related or modified by climate change factors.

**[1:23:37] Speaker F:** So for example, air pollution could be monitoring of air pollution, if linked to climate change could be under scope.

**[1:23:47] Speaker F:** These are just some examples I mentioned here. Of course, other solutions under the categories that are mentioned in this slide can also be under scope of this call. Next slide I include here in this slide a number of aspects that you should consider when preparing an application to this topic. So when considering the climate resilience of healthcare systems, activities that are targeting the general infrastructure are not in scope and cannot be covered under this call. The solutions under scope can target, as I mentioned already, communities, populations, individuals or healthcare systems, or they can target all can be solutions that target all these groups.

**[1:24:39] Speaker F:** The consortia that you put together can include a diversity of stakeholders and I provide here in this slide some examples. But potential procurers are not limited to these groups that I mentioned here, but just to say that it can be a diverse group of stakeholders. The focus is mainly on solutions for climate adaptation and resilience, but there are several environmental factors that can interact with climate factors and that can affect human health. So these aspects can also be considered if there is a clear link with climate related health impacts. And finally, I would like to highlight that there is the need to involve procurement decision makers in the call.

**[1:25:21] Speaker F:** So this is written in the call and there is a need to consider this aspect for this call and I think I will stop here so we can have some time for questions.

**[1:25:35] Speaker A:** Thanks a lot Rita. Yes indeed. Now it's Time for questions. So I will pass the floor.

**[1:25:41] Speaker A:** Floor back to Alex for moderation. The Q and A session.

**[1:25:48] Speaker B:** Thank you so much. Carmen, can you see the slido questions?

**[1:25:53] Speaker A:** Yes. Perfect.

**[1:25:55] Speaker B:** Okay, thank you all for sending so many questions. We have a really rich set of questions. We will not unfortunately be able to get through all of them, but we will answer them all in writing and they will be available on the funding and tenders portal. So rest assured that if. If your question is not addressed right now in the session, it will be addressed. We have about 20 questions that I've accepted so that it's manageable.

**[1:26:24] Speaker B:** And as I said, the ones that have not been accepted will still be replied to. So the first question is, is the webinar recorded and will be recorded. Will the recording be shared? This one I will tackle myself. Yes, the webinar is being recorded.

**[1:26:37] Speaker B:** The recording will be available on the Haleya website. Carolina can provide more information, but I think I covered everything regarding that question.

**[1:26:48] Speaker B:** So let's move on to the next one, which is for the cancer topic. Can the PCP be used to support clinical studies for innovative solutions? So I would like to give the floor to either Kai or Yan Willem for this one.

**[1:27:09] Speaker H:** Let me start. Yes. The answer is yes.

**[1:27:18] Speaker B:** Okay. Kai, anything to add or. No?

**[1:27:23] Speaker E:** No, nothing to add.

**[1:27:25] Speaker B:** Okay, moving on to the next one is also. It's also for you guys, Mission Cancer. The topic explains that patients should have an active role in the activities of the PCP grant. How does this work?

**[1:27:36] Speaker H:** Comprom practice.

**[1:27:40] Speaker H:** Kay, would you want to start or.

**[1:27:46] Speaker E:** Yeah. In the cancer mission, one of our objectives is to include patients in the, in the, in our. In our topics and in the work that we do. So I suppose the patients that you should consider how. Whatever technology you're developing.

**[1:28:05] Speaker E:** To consider patients in the development of that technology.

**[1:28:11] Speaker H:** Yeah. So just to complement what Kay mentioned, this is really one of those key characteristics in all these missions. So in the cancer mission, you will see that in essentially every topic, everything that we do, we want to see the involvement of citizens. So if, for example, you need some inspiration, you could look at some of the previous topic that we have already published. You could go from there, you could quickly find some of these projects that are running. Maybe you find the website not on cordis, but you can find the project website itself to see what they're doing when it comes to working with citizens at risk or patients to get some ideas. But yeah, it really means that patients are actively involved in, for example, the design of the trials. So let's say have a decision something to say about the endpoints that we usually describe that in topics what the endpoint should be.

**[1:29:15] Speaker H:** And we see that this is being done in these projects. This makes it also harder for consortia to submit a grant. We have seen it in the past. But what we see is that the successful grants they do a nice job. There is really close involvement of citizens, let's say, you know, school for example, or patients or survivors that have an active role in what is being done in these projects. And this could range from setting up a living lab setting where the patients are part of this living lab where they are going to to test a number of solutions that are the topic of that of that project or they work with children in school settings, hundreds of schools sometimes or tens of types of different countries where they work on for example prevention or apps or all kinds of things. There are many examples.

**[1:30:16] Speaker H:** So I think it would just take some time for you to maybe yeah. Find those examples. That's all I think we we can say for the moment.

**[1:30:27] Speaker B:** Thank you, Jan. I will try to select now a question about one of the other topics in the webinar just to give a chance for the audience to hear about the different about the different presentations. So the next question I would like to highlight is which kind of participant may lead or coordinate the consortium? Strictly public buyers. So I think this is the question for one of the general presentations I

**[1:30:54] Speaker A:** can answer that question. So any other beneficiaries may theoretically lead or coordinate a consortium, of course not be in the context of lead procurer because that's obviously for representatives of the Bayes group.

**[1:31:08] Speaker A:** But nevertheless, as the procurement is the focus of this kind of projects, most of the times the coordinators are procurers most of the times, but not always. We have seen also cases where for example the coordinator is one of the consultants or other kind of organizations that help procurers to implement these projects. But in principle most of the time it is public buyers that do coordinate the consortium. So the answer answer is any kind of the beneficiaries can be.

**[1:31:43] Speaker B:** Thank you.

**[1:31:44] Speaker A:** Most of the time is public procurers.

**[1:31:47] Speaker B:** Thank you so much, Carmen. I don't know.

**[1:31:49] Speaker A:** Take this next question because I think it's an important one since the pre commercial. This is a very important question to answer because whoever has put forward that question has not understood well the pre commercial procurement instrument.

**[1:32:05] Speaker A:** So please the pre commercial procurement is for focus on R and D. It's not focused on the buying of a solution. Nevertheless, the limited set of solutions that have been developed successfully at the end of the project, can be procured in the context of the pre commercial procurement but can also be procured afterwards through a follow up. So a PCP is really focusing on the procurement of R and D to develop solutions that are not yet in the market market. So the solution cannot be already on the market because if it is in the market there is no need to do a pre commercial procurement and therefore the proposal would not be in the scope of the topic. So it's very important that PCP is still requiring research and development.

**[1:32:52] Speaker A:** I hope this is clear.

**[1:32:54] Speaker B:** Thank you Carmen. I had missed that question. So good that you addressed it. I don't know if Mark is still with us because there's a question here that mentions him.

**[1:33:04] Speaker B:** The question says the topic says it does not provide direct funding to developers, industry or research organizations and instead we apply through calls for tenders put up by procurers. Can you provide any feedback on what are the deadlines for these calls for tender or is it up to the procurer to establish those? I don't know if Mark is with us still.

**[1:33:23] Speaker G:** Yeah, I'm still with you.

**[1:33:25] Speaker H:** So he asks what are the deadlines

**[1:33:28] Speaker G:** for these calls for tender? Actually we set during when you make the proposal, you set a timing on how many time you give to the different steps. So I think in our case it was six months for the first one, one year for the second one, and one and a half year for the third one. But that is open to a little bit what the phases, what what you expect the supporting entities to do in the different phases. But it has to of course stay within the limit of a project.

**[1:33:57] Speaker B:** Great, thank you so much. So let's move now to a question on the climate pcp. Just to give a chance to everyone to reply, the question reads Projects are encouraged to channel activities through the mission implementation platform and community of practice. Are budget allocations and specific tasks for these synergies expected to be included in the proposal? Rita, I hand over to you.

**[1:34:22] Speaker F:** Thank you Alex. So as I mentioned in my presentation, this is a topic that is co founded, funded by the Cluster Health and the Mission on adaptation to Climate Change. The mission has a very important role in helping to develop and test and adapt the solutions climate resilience solutions at the local and regional level. So these platforms, the mission implementation platform and also the community of practice are very important platforms to which the outcomes from the PCP will be will be relevant. So these tasks that are very relevant in this context that will support interaction with the mission need to be planned. Yes, they need to be part of the proposal and sufficient budget allocated to perform these tasks during the lifetime of the pcp.

**[1:35:19] Speaker B:** Thank you, Rita. I think we'll have to leave it there because we are 10 minutes now. Over time time. I want to thank everyone once again.

**[1:35:28] Speaker A:** Alex, Alex, maybe we can take five more minutes.

**[1:35:31] Speaker B:** Five more minutes. Okay.

**[1:35:32] Speaker A:** Yeah, let's stay five more minutes. I see that there is still a lot of participants connected so I will still.

**[1:35:38] Speaker B:** Okay. The next question is on cancer. A lot of academic centers have started working on developing cancer cell therapy. Will this PCP topic support cell therapy? Kai Yan, I don't know which of you would like to take this?

**[1:35:52] Speaker B:** This one?

**[1:35:54] Speaker H:** Yeah, so I, I happily can answer this one. So thank you for this question. So this is exactly one of the areas where we really want to, to come in as a cancer mission because as you all know and all the ones who are online, this is a major issue. Cell therapy is booming, but it's only for the happy rest rich.

**[1:36:20] Speaker H:** It's very, very expensive. So we really want to this type of topics, we want to support more affordable cell therapy. It has to happen because there is tremendous competition from China. We again heard this at the cancer showcase event last week, two weeks ago that this is really. There is a lot of pressure, commercial pressure from countries like China which are trying to bring down the cost replication rapidly.

**[1:36:49] Speaker H:** At the same time we know that many academic centers in Europe have already jumped on this. We know that even, you know, governments are supporting this type of academic efforts. So we hope we can contribute with this and really get it to patients at an affordable price as soon as possible and then to be quick. So there were another. Was another topic related to this. So I think that's now up answered. But the other thing is of course what other type of, you know, therapeutics are eligible? And there is a question on drug repurposing. So thank you also for this one which is something we also very closely follow and we really want to do more on drug repurposing. There is so much that can be done in this area.

**[1:37:36] Speaker H:** And so the commission is supporting two big projects on drug purposing but more can be done through procurement. So we. Yes, this is definitely eligible drug repurposing and we really hope we do receive some applications on drug repurposing as well. Thank you.

**[1:37:53] Speaker B:** Thank you, Jan.

**[1:37:54] Speaker B:** I will give Rita one more chance as well to answer questions. So on the climate pcp, the call allows for a focus on environmental factors, air pollution, mentions that interact with Climate change. Can a proposal focus primarily on air pollution monitoring or would you advise against reta?

**[1:38:14] Speaker F:** Yeah, I would not advise against, but it needs to. The link to climate change and to the impacts on health needs to be clear and needs to be shown in the proposal. Of course we know that there are a lot of interactions between heat for example, and the impacts of air pollution on health. So this is an aspect that could be explained, explored, but all depends on the way that this is presented. If we are talking only about monitoring of air pollution without any clear link with the impacts on health related to climate change, this would be out of scope.

**[1:38:54] Speaker F:** But I see a lot of potential angles where the two aspects could be connected in a proposal.

**[1:39:02] Speaker B:** Thank you Richard. I will go to this one next. Actually this one applies to either call, so maybe I give Catherine the chance to respond to this one.

**[1:39:14] Speaker A:** On SME I can answer.

**[1:39:16] Speaker A:** Okay, so let me start by the Australian procurer because this is about who can be part of the consortium. An Australian procurer Australia is associated to Horizon Europe from January 2020. So in principle they should be allowed to be part of the group of buyers as any buyer that comes from an EU member state or associated to Horizon Europe program. As regards the other question on the council call, whether an SME based in the EU or countries associated to Horizon Europe can lead the PCP grant, I think we should not know what that SME is supposed to do. I mean if this SME is going to do any kind of activity related to the implementation of the project or of the procurement, whether it's advice or help to run the, the, the pre commercial procurement or communication dissemination activities, standardization whatsoever, then of course can be a beneficiary in the PCP grant and can theoretically lead the grant, be the coordinator.

**[1:40:27] Speaker A:** However, if the SME is supposed to be a supplier and participate in the call for tenders as they would be supposed to build the solutions, then they cannot be beneficiaries of the grant for the reasons I explained during my introduction that there will be then a conflict of interest. So in order to answer completely the question, we should know what is what this SME is supposed to be done. But in any case if it is in an associated country to Horizon Europe, they can be beneficiaries of the grant as long as they are not going to be suppliers of the solutions to be developed.

**[1:41:05] Speaker B:** Thank you so much Carmen. I see that it's now 1146, so maybe I stay with you and quickly, before I give you back the floor, I just want to mention Here at the bottom of the slido screen you see a comment from our colleague Carolina specifying where you will be able to find this recording.

**[1:41:22] Speaker D:** Yeah, if I may just compliment this. Please also note that all the participants have shared their emails. Therefore after the meeting we're gonna make sure to send the presentation and the exact link to this recording. So we're gonna share everything with you. Don't, don't stress, don't worry about it.

**[1:41:41] Speaker B:** Great. Thank you so much Carolina. And with that I give the floor to Carmen for the closing.

**[1:41:47] Speaker A:** Thanks a lot Alex. Well, I would just like to thank you all the speakers or my colleagues and Mark who have been very kind to provide as much as possible presentations in order for you to better understand the instrument and the specific requirements that we are expecting for you to focus in the context of these two different pre commercial procurement.

**[1:42:11] Speaker A:** I I hope that after all these presentations you have a better understanding of the topic and you are excited to come out with a proposal. Please note that all the questions that you have asked that have been either answered or not because of lack of time will be answered in the context of the frequently asked questions of the portal. Please note as well that you will still have the possibility to participate an info day related to these topics. The topic on climate adaptation will be part of the info day at the end of November with the rest of the topics of cluster 1 and the topic funded in the mission on cancer will be part of the infoday specific for the mission on cancer topics at the end of January 2027. So you will still be able to hear more about these topics.

**[1:43:03] Speaker A:** In the meantime I would just like really to encourage encouraged to go through all the different material that is part of the presentation I did at the beginning to know more about the instrument to prepare yourself and I really would like to wish you the best of the luck with the preparation of the proposal submission and hope you win one of those grants. Thanks a lot and wishing you an excellent day.

**[1:43:32] Speaker C:** Sam.