Mapping future trends in life science

An online workshop to position for EU funding

One of the things that took me some time to realize is that if you look at research funding call topics they are a fairly good assessment and in some cases predictor of future trends.

For example, I noticed that the concept of interception, treating a disease before it manifests clinically, was part of the Innovative Health Initiative’s (IHI) strategic research agenda and some call topics before people knew and accepted of the concept.

I would bring interception up as an idea for a project and would be met with dismissive uncertainty.

A few months later, it seemed to be what everyone was talking about. Of course there were pioneers. During that time I met the leaders of the INTERCEPT consortium. They had been wanting to develop the concept of intercepting Crohn’s Disease for decades. We worked together and developed a successful IHI funding proposal.

So, starting in the second half of September I want to hold online workshops where I will use some design thinking approaches to gather perspectives on a specific trend in life science that is reflected in the current Horizon Europe 2026-2027 work programme. We will then identify the opportunities for EU funding.

These workshops will become one of the benefits of the paid levels of this newsletter, but at least the first one will be open for free subscribers as well.

When you register for the meeting you will also have to opportunity to pick your top three trends and I will use that to decide upon the topic for the first workshop.