The EIT Community France is opening a regional innovation hub in the new campus of the Paris Brain Institute’s incubator

• EIT Health France, EIT Climate-KIC France, EIT InnoEnergy France and EIT Manufacturing France (hot-desking) are consolidating their offices in Paris as of 25 March 2021
• The four Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) will settle in the new accelerator campus of iPEPS – the Healthtech Hub by the Paris Brain Institute (13th district of Paris)
  at 187 rue de Chevaleret Paris 75013
• The regional innovation hub in Paris will enhance joint collaborations for new innovation projects in the health, climate, energy and manufacturing sectors.

In France, Paris has been identified as a target city by EIT, as five EIT Knowledge and Innovation Communities are located there: EIT Health, EIT Digital, EIT Climate-KIC, EIT Manufacturing and EIT InnoEnergy. Moreover, France received a total of EUR 46.89 million in EIT grants in 2019, which is the second highest amount per EU country. This amount represents an increase of EUR 5.11 million compared to 2018 and it was directed to French organisations via six EIT KICs.

Four out of five of Paris-based EIT Communities announce they are moving together in the new campus s of the iPEPS  –The Healthtech Hub by the Paris Brain Institute (13th district of Paris) beginning from March 2021 as part of the European offices consolidation plan established in 2018 by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). The four Communities will be reunited under the flag of the EIT Community.

The iPEPS’ new campus

This new iPEPS’ campus will be dedicated to med-tech and A.I. centered healthcare startups. Its ideal location in the 13th arrondissement of Paris will put the EIT Communities in close contact with the French innovation ecosystem as well as French institutions such as the French Ministry of Economy, the Pitié Salpêtrière hospital  and Station F – word’s biggest start-ups campus.

“We are very excited to welcome the EIT community to our new campus. This new collaboration marks our commitment to bringing all stakeholders together to build the best healthcare solutions,” stated Alexis Genin, Research and Technology office Director at Paris Brain Institute.

Past Cross-KICs collaborations

Moreover, this new organisation will offer greater visibility to the EIT Community regionally and improve the efficiency of their collaboration for innovation projects and activities addressing health, climate, energy and manufacturing topics, such as the joint activity Childhood Obesity[1], Cross-Kic Artificial Intelligence[2] and WP7 Human Capital[3].

“The gathering of four Knowledge and Innovation Communities of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology under the same roof will bring the benefit of enhanced collaboration among the KICs partners ecosystems, while shaping new cross-KICs workshops and activities, on topics such as Biomanufacturing & Breakthrough Technology Value Chain activities, Artificial Intelligence, and/or Scaling up the Venture Centre of Excellence program (VCoE) to other KICs” stated Jean-Marc Bourez, Managing Director of EIT Health France and Head of the VCoE.

EIT Crisis Response Initiative

As a reminder, the EIT Governing Board decided on 14 May 2020 to allocate EUR 60 million of additional funding to the KICs for innovators powering high-impact solutions that tackle the unprecedented social and economic challenge caused by COVID-19 pandemic.

The financing allowed the launch of new innovation projects to address the immediate crisis as part of the ‘Pandemic Response Projects’, and supported highly innovative start-ups, scale-ups and SMEs crucial to the economy’s fast recovery to benefit from additional funding under the ‘Venture Support Instrument’. Please find below some examples of Calls and initiatives launched by EIT Climate-KIC, EIT Health, EIT InnoEnergy and EIT Manufacturing:

• #EITCrisisResponse – EIT Climate-KIC COVID-19 Venture Financing Support
• #EITCrisisResponse – EIT Health Start-up Rescue Instrument
• EIT Health: Make Connections
• #EITManufacturing: Open call for fast-track innovation projects and scale-up and SME support in response to the COVID-19 crisis
• EIT InnoEnergy joins energy companies to alleviate the impact of COVID-19

On 8 September 2020, 207 innovation projects and ventures from 32 countries were awarded funding from the EUR 60 million.

EIT Health France

EIT Health France is the French branch of the European Institute of Health Innovation and Technology. Deploying a collaborative and pan-European approach, EIT Health France brings together French players in the field of health innovation to meet the challenges facing Europe’s health systems. In France, EIT Health works with more than 40 partners from the pharmaceutical industry, the private sector and the public sector. the med-tech industry, research centres, universities, hospitals, clusters and Living Labs.

The construction of the building has been supported by the EIT Health French partners Assistance Publique Hopitaux de Paris (APHP), Centre National de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), INSERM and Sorbonne Université.

In addition to the EIT Health France team, the iPEPS’ campus will host VCoE and Investor Networks programmes teams, part of the EIT Health invest GMBH.

The Venture Centre of Excellence (VCoE) is an Open Innovation programme connecting investors and other key stakeholders from the life sciences and healthcare ecosystems to highly qualified pan-European deal flow, accessed through a custom AI platform and exclusive member community.

The EIT Health Investor Network connects qualified companies seeking early-stage funding with the first pan-European consortium of more than 80 healthcare investors across 17 countries. They accelerate equity rounds by highlighting and connecting early-stage start-ups with targeted private and institutional healthcare investors across Europe.

[1] The activity supported by EIT Health and EIT Digital and led by the ThinkSlim4Kids consortium aiming to bring to the market, via the creation and launching of a new start-up, significant improvements in the prevention and/or treatment of Childhood Obesity.

[2] EIT Health collaborate with EIT Manufacturing, EIT Urban Mobility, EIT Climate, InnoEnergy and EIT Digital on defining mechanisms to address the task of integrating AI across curricula in the education courses the EIT supports, in order to contribute to developing a talent pool for AI in Europe. Topics will also be horizontal – data, ethics, human capital – ensuring all KICs can benefit.

[3] SkillCharge is a web application that can help individuals identify and develop skills that are needed to fulfil a specific labour market occupation. This activity is supported by EIT Health and EIT InnoEnergy.