Transnational call for proposals aiming to transform healthcare systems - THCS 2025

The French National Research Agency is joining the 3rd transnational call for proposals launched within the framework of the Transforming Health and Care Systems (THCS) Partnership « Better care closer to home: Enhancing primary and community care ».

The Transforming Health and Care Systems (THCS) initiative, established as a European Partnership under Horizon Europe and co-funded by the European Commission, aims to address the increasing burdens on European health and care systems. The initiative focuses on developing coordinated, harmonized solutions involving EU member states, associated countries, research and innovation funders, and other public authorities. The overarching goal is to ensure high-quality, sustainable health and care services by fostering transnational collaboration, aligning regional and national research strategies, and promoting interdisciplinary excellence.

The aim of this call is to fund research and innovation projects that strengthen primary and community health and care systems and provide policy and decision makers with the necessary knowledge and tools to govern the transitions needed in the primary and community care sector. Projects funded under this call will deliver promising financial, organizational, and practice-based service innovations that promote the transformation of health and care systems and contribute to faster exchange of best practices across different countries and regions.

Proposals are expected to address one of two sub-topics:

• Sub-topic 1: Strengthening the primary and community health and care system. This involves reducing reliance on institutionalized treatment in favour of seamless care pathways and different forms of primary and community care through organizational innovations, operational improvements, and innovative models of service delivery.
• Sub-topic 2: Systemic approaches to modernizing the primary and community care sector. This involves providing evidence-based knowledge to support policy development and strategic planning for the modernization of the primary and community care sector, leveraging multidisciplinary and transnational perspectives.

Only transnational projects will be funded. The following conditions must apply to the composition of the consortia:

• the minimum project duration is 12 months and projects must be designed to be achievable during a maximum funding period of 36 months;
• joint research proposals may be submitted by applicants belonging to one of the following categories (according to national/regional regulations):
  • Academia: research teams working at universities, universities of applied sciences, other higher education institutions, research and knowledge dissemination organisations or research institutes;
  • Clinical/public health sector: research teams working at hospitals, policlinics, medical practices, public health and/or other health care settings and health organisations;
  • Companies: private companies of all sizes;
  • Operational stakeholders: e.g. citizens and/or citizen representatives, local communities, schools, municipalities, local/national NGOs, consumer organisations. Operational stakeholders should be in a position to provide useful knowledge to the consortium, ensure the consortium’s research is useful and translatable to their (or other) organizational contexts, and/or influence decision making or create change within their organisations. Operational stakeholders should be engaged in the research process from conception of the study to dissemination;
• the consortium must include a minimum of three (3) eligible partners asking for funding from at least one (1) EU Member State and at least two (2) other independent legal entities, each established in different Member States or Associated Countries whose funding organisations participate in the call. Each of these partners must be eligible and request funding from the respective funding organisation. All three legal entities must be independent of each other;
• maximum number of partners eligible for funding is nine (9);
• maximum two (2) eligible partners from the same country;
• maximum of two (2) collaborators per consortium are permitted. Collaborators are self-funded partners, i.e. partners that do not request funds from one of the participating funding partner organisations (FPOs) (i.e. partners from non-funding countries or partners who are not eligible according to national/regional regulations of the participating funding organisations). Collaborators do not count towards the maximum number of partners.

ANR will exclusively fund the French partners (except healthcare institutions) of the selected projects, up to a maximum of 300,000€ per partner (350,000€ maximum if the partner is the project coordinator). The funding will be awarded for a maximum initial period of three (3) years.

The Directorate General of Health Offer (DGOS) of the Ministry of Health and Prevention, also participating in this call, will support healthcare facilities (e.g. “établissements de santé”, “groupements de coopération sanitaire”, “maisons de santé” or “centres de santé”).
A two-step submission and evaluation procedure has been established for joint applications: pre-proposals and full-proposals. In both phases, one joint proposal document shall be prepared by the partners of a joint transnational project. Full-proposals will only be accepted from applicants explicitly invited by the Joint Call Secretariat to submit to participate in step 2.

The completed scientific proposal must be submitted electronically on the call submission site (no proposal submitted directly to ANR will be eligible).

Scientific proposals must be written in English. Please note that the national/regional funding organizations may require additional documentation from applicants according to national/regional regulations. It is the responsibility of each project partner to ensure that all the necessary documents are submitted on time to the appropriate recipient.

Countries participating

Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland