In 2019, EIT Health InnoStars was undertaking a study on the „Seeking out opportunities for funding interconnectivity with ESIF and National/Regional Funds”.  The contract of the study has been awarded to Regional Foundation for Enterprise Promotion of the Town of Székesfehérvár (RVA) (Hungary). BGI Consulting team participated in the latter as national experts.

 

The InnoStars region is one of the seven geographical areas of EIT Health. It covers half of Europe, including Poland, Hungary, Italy, and Portugal, as well as additional regions included in the EIT Health Regional Innovation Scheme programme – the Baltic States, Croatia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Greece and Romania. The evaluation covered five regions: the Southern Transdanubia region of Hungary, the Pomeranian region of Poland, Eastern Slovakia, mainland Croatia and Lithuania.

 

The study analyses the position of health innovations in the strategic agendas of these countries, conducts fiscal map and develops challenges in the use of funding. During the evaluation, various methods of data collection and analysis were used - analysis of documents, secondary sources, monitoring data and available information, questionnaire survey and interviews.

 

Lithuania's strategic agenda focuses on technological innovation as a desirable outcome of research and experimental development (R&D).  For the 2014-2020 period, the main strategic policies for Research, Experimental Development and Innovation (RDI) are to strengthen the RDI system, promote collaborative R&D, stimulating the demand for innovation and creating innovations in demand in the market. The major challenge is insufficient investment in RDI, especially in the private sector. 

 

For the 2014-2020 period, the main sources of health RDI funding in Lithuania are EU funds (under the Operational Programme for the European Union funds' investments in 2014-202 and Horizon 2020), national budget funds (under the 2015-2021 National Programmes  “Healthy Aging“ and “Welfare Society“) and potentially EEA financial mechanisms (under the Baltic Research Programme 2014-2021). Challenges in using available funding sources have been identified at various levels.

 

Firstly, the lack of inter-institutional cooperation in the planning of RDI investments and the different interests and institutional culture of the institutions involved in the planning process leads to a lack of clear priorities for RDI funding. This results in a lack of coherence between RDI funding sources, fragmentation of funding in this area and limited impact. Secondly, due to inadequately low salaries of researchers and limited opportunities to receive additional income from project activities, the motivation of researchers to participate in international projects decreases. Thirdly, the lack of international visibility of the country's high-level RDI infrastructure, and the lack of foreign language, networking and management skills of researchers limit the opportunities to attract foreign investment, establish international cooperation and compete for RDI at the international level.

 

The study results were presented in the reports, available online