CARDINNOV - Call from the European Partnership ERA4Health

FCT is a member of the new co-funded European Partnership ERA4Health - Fostering a European Research Area for Health. This partnership aims to establish a flexible and effective coordination between funding agencies of the European Research Area to fund and implement joint research and innovation programs, in Europe, in priority areas of public health and well-being.

ERA4Health brings together the success and experience of several previous European initiatives such as ERA-CVD, EuroNanoMed and the ERANet cofunds developed within the framework of JPI HDHL.

The partnership currently brings together 32 organizations, involving 20 countries of the European Union, 3 associated countries (Israel, Norway and Turkey) and 2 third countries (Egypt, Taiwan).

In Portugal, FCT and the Agency for Clinical Research and Biomedical Innovation (AICIB) are the organizations that participate in ERA4Health.

The CARDINNOV call aims to fund projects in ​​cardiovascular diseases, with the theme “Research targeting development of innovative therapeutic strategies in cardiovascular disease” and addressing one or both topics below:

• Repair and/or regeneration of the heart and/or the blood vessels;
• Chronic heart failure and atrial fibrillation

For a detailed description the topic scope, please see the call text.

The following are individual or co-promotion beneficiaries:

a) Non-entrepreneurial entities of the R&I system, namely:

    i. Higher education institutions, their institutes and R&D units;

    ii. State or international laboratories with head office in Portugal;

   iii. Non-profit private institutions whose main object is R&D activity;

   iv. Other non-profit public and private institutions developing or participating in scientific research activities.

b) Companies of any type and under any legal form.

The information contained in this section does not exempt you from consulting Article 3 of the "Regulation of projects financed exclusively by national funds"

This call only funds transnational projects. Please see the call text to find the rules applicable to the size and composition of the consortia.

The funding agencies participating in this call are: Austria (FWF), Belgium (F.R.S.-FNRS, FWO), France (ANR), Israel (CSO-MOH), Italy (IT MOH, MUR), Latvia (LCS), Lithuania (RCL), Poland (NCBR), Portugal (FCT), Romania (UEFISCDI), Slovakia (SAS), Spain (AEI, CSCJA, ISCIII), Taiwan (NSTC), Netherlands (NWO), Turkey (TUBITAK)

Pre-proposal submission: deadline - February 7, 2023, 16:00 CET.

Submission of invited full proposals: deadline - June 15, 2023, 16:00 CEST.

1. Please see the call text available on this page;
2. Consult the national and/or regional rules of the countries participating in your consortium (including the Portuguese), available in "Annex I" of the call text. The existence of non-eligible partners may result in the rejection of the entire consortium;
3. Consortium partners must fill in the pre-proposal form. The consortium coordinator is responsible to submit the pre-proposal on the call’s electronic platform (see "Important Links” below and the CARDINNOV website);
4. Within 10 working days after the deadline for submitting the pre-proposals, the Portuguese teams (Partners and/or Coordinators) must send to the Call National Contact Point (era4health@fct.pt) a Statement of Commitment “(please see “Documents of the call") duly signed by the Responsible Investigator and by the Head of the Portuguese applicant’s organization and stamped. FCT may later require the original of the Statement of Commitment.

The information contained on this page constitutes only a summary of the call’s information and does not exempt you from carefully reading all the call documents available on this page and on the ERA4Health website (see “Important Links”).

The evaluation of proposals has two phases:

1. First Phase:

• Eligibility check of the pre-proposals by the call secretariat ensuring compliance with formal requirements (e.g. submission date, consortium composition and size, inclusion of all information in English, pre-proposal with appropriate size limits, etc);
• Eligibility check of pre-proposals by the National Contact Points of the Funding Organizations that participate in the call ensuring compliance with national requirements;
• Evaluation of eligible pre-proposals by 3 reviewers according to the evaluation criteria described in the call text: i) excellence, ii) impact and iii) quality and efficiency of the implementation;

The Call Steering Committee will meet to decide which proposals will be invited to submit a full proposal based on the reviewers’ recommendations and to ensure a reasonable balance of requested and available national/regional budgets. Pre-proposals which do not pass this assessment will not be considered for the full proposal stage (second phase).

2. Second Phase:

• Eligibility check of the proposals by the call’s secretariat to ensure compliance with formal requirements and that the proposals have not changed substantially from the respective pre-proposals;
• Eligibility check of the proposals by the National Contact Points of the Funding Organizations that participate in the call ensuring compliance with national requirements;
• Evaluation of the eligible proposals by the Evaluation Panel according to the evaluation criteria described in the call text: i) excellence, ii) impact and iii) quality and efficiency of implementation;

Before the evaluation panel meeting, there will be a “rebuttal” phase in which each coordinator is provided with the reviewers’ assessments. This stage allows applicants to comment on factual errors or misunderstandings that may have occurred in the review process and to reply to reviewers’ questions. This phase is optional and will run from August 29 to September 6, 2023.

The Call Steering Committee will decide which projects to recommend for funding considering: i) the ranking list established by the Evaluation Panel, ii) available funding and iii) alignment of proposals with ethical standards and regulations.

FCT financial commitment for the CARDINNOV call: 250.000 €

Maximum requested funding for a consortium with Portuguese participation: 150.000 €

Maximum requested funding for a consortium with Portuguese coordination: 250.000 €

If more than one Portuguese institution participates in each consortium, the budget must be shared.

Portuguese institutions must follow the Regulation on projects funded solely by national funds (see “Regulation” in this page). The dedication (FTE) in transnational projects is not considered for the 100% (FTE) dedication to national projects.

English version to be updated soon

Rita Cavaleiro
era4health@fct.pt

This partnership is funded by the Horizon Europe Framework Program under grant contract n° 1101095426