The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) is a European initiative to improve the competitive situation of the European Union in the field of pharmaceutical research. The IMI is a joint initiative (public-private partnership) of the DG Research of the European Commission, representing the European Communities, and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA). IMI is laid out as a Joint Technology Initiative within the Seventh Framework Programme.
The Innovative Medicines Initiative is aimed towards removing research bottlenecks in the current drug development process. The IMI Joint Technology Initiative (IMI JTI), to be implemented by the IMI Joint Undertaking is meant to address these research bottlenecks. Its €2bn budget makes it the largest biomedical public-private partnership in the world.
The funding scheme has been criticized, requiring universities to invest more money than with EU FP7 programs. Besides the non-competitive financial aspects of participation in IMI projects for academia, this criticism also discusses that intellectual property is freely flowing to industry.
The Sixth Framework Programme's research projects InnoMed AddNeuroMed and InnoMed PredTox acted as pilot projects establishing the feasibility of this particular public-private partnership. Since then, the IMI has had four funding rounds: the first call had the topic Safety, while the second call was about Efficacy. Projects for these two calls are ongoing.
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