The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) is Europe's largest public-private initiative aiming to speed up the development of better and safer medicines for patients.
IMI supports collaborative research projects and builds networks of industrial and academic experts in order to boost pharmaceutical innovation in Europe.
IMI is a joint undertaking between the European Union and the pharmaceutical industry association EFPIA.
The origins of the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) lie in the European Technology Platform on Innovative Medicines that was supported under the European Commission's Sixth Framework Programme for Research (FP6) as a gathering of stakeholders, led by the pharmaceutical industry.
IMI was launched in 2008 with the goal of ‘significantly improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the drug development process with the long-term aim that the pharmaceutical sector produce more effective and safer innovative medicines’. IMI’s €2 billion budget for the period 2008-2013 made it the largest life sciences PPP in the world. Half of this budget came from the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). The rest came in the form of in-kind contributions from EFPIA and its member companies. EFPIA companies do not receive any EU funding via IMI; the EU funding supports the participation of the ‘public’ partners in IMI projects, i.e. universities, small biotech companies, patient groups, regulators, etc.
A successful initiative
By the end of 2013, IMI had released 11 Calls for proposals and committed its entire €2 billion budget. Most importantly, it had demonstrated the success of the PPP model – by bringing together experts from industry, academia, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), patient groups, and regulators, IMI projects were delivering scientific breakthroughs in fields as diverse as autism, diabetes, medicines safety, lung disease, and more.
Analyses of the results of IMI projects highlight the benefits of this way of working. Thomson Reuters is tracking the citation index of research papers coming out of IMI projects – this measure involves assessing how often a paper is cited by other papers, and is often used as a measure of research quality. Their work reveals that the citation impact of IMI papers is twice the world average and significantly higher than the EU average. In addition, a study of the selected projects’ outputs by the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven found that IMI projects are generating products and knowledge that could prove valuable from a business point of view.
From IMI 1 to IMI 2
The success of IMI prompted the European Commission and EFPIA to take steps to continue IMI under Horizon 2020, the European Commission’s framework programme for research and innovation that runs from 2014 to 2020. The legislation creating ‘IMI 2’ was approved by the European Parliament and Member States in the first half of 2014, and IMI 2 was officially launched in July 2014.
As under IMI 1, the EFPIA companies and other large industrial partners will not receive any funding from the EU; rather, they will contribute to the projects, largely through in-kind contributions, such as their researchers’ time or by providing access to other resources and equipment.
Building on success
The IMI 2 programme builds on the successes of IMI 1. As set out in its revised Strategic Research Agenda, IMI will remain focused on the needs of patients and society, and on speeding up the development of urgently-needed treatments. In addition, it will place a greater emphasis on accelerating patient access to new treatments. For applicants, IMI 2 will mean simpler procedures and a more open structure:
IMI's goals
The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) is working to improve health by speeding up the development of, and patient access to, innovative medicines, particularly in areas where there is an unmet medical or social need. It does this by facilitating collaboration between the key players involved in healthcare research, including universities, the pharmaceutical and other industries, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), patient organisations, and medicines regulators. IMI is a partnership between the European Union (represented by the European Commission) and the European pharmaceutical industry (represented by EFPIA, the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations).
The budget
IMI is the world's biggest public-private partnership (PPP) in the life sciences. Through the IMI 2 programme, it has a €3.3 billion budget for the period 2014-2024. Of this:
EFPIA companies and Associated Partners do not receive any EU funding, but contribute to the projects ‘in kind’, for example by contributing their researchers’ time or providing access to research facilities or resources.
IMI was launched in 2008 and currently has over 50 projects, with more in the pipeline. Some focus on specific health issues such as neurological conditions (Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, depression, chronic pain, and autism), diabetes, lung disease, oncology, inflammation & infection, tuberculosis, and obesity. Others focus on broader challenges in drug development like drug and vaccine safety, knowledge management, the sustainability of chemical drug production, the use of stem cells for drug discovery, drug behaviour in the body, the creation of a European platform to discover novel medicines, and antimicrobial resistance. In addition to research projects, IMI supports education and training projects.
During its first phase (2008-2013), IMI had a budget of €2 billion, half of which came from the EU's Seventh Framework Programme for research (FP7), and half of which came from in kind contributions by EFPIA companies.