IMI is the world’s largest public-private partnership in health with a total budget of €5 billion – half from the European Union and half from the pharmaceutical industry, through EFPIA. IMI refers to two subsequent programmes: IMI1 under FP7 and IMI2 under Horizon 2020.

IMI carries the torch of medical innovation

EFPIA members are heavily engaged in the Innovative Medicines Initiative (Call 21) to fast track collaborative research, identifying any suitable assets in their libraries that could be utilised to develop diagnostics and treatments in the fight against COVID-19.

The IMI CARE (Corona Accelerated R&D in Europe) project is the largest undertaking of its kind dedicated to discovering and developing urgently needed treatment options for COVID-19. The CARE consortium will accelerate COVID-19 R&D by bringing together the leading expertise and projects of 37 teams from academic and non-profit research institutions and pharmaceutical companies into a comprehensive drug discovery engine.

Public-private collaboration delivers to people: some examples