empirica Communication & Technology Research in Bonn, Germany, has announced that it will lead UNICOM, a major new EU health innovation project on up-scaling the global univocal identification of medicines.
Funded by the European Commission under its “Horizon 2020” Research and Innovation Programme, the action has a value of € 21 million, with EC funding of € 19 million, and consists of a consortium of altogether 70 organisations across 18 European countries and the USA: either as beneficiaries or observers. Work started on Dec. 01, 2019, and is expected to last for 4 years. It is the largest European Commission funded digital health grant ever to be led by a German Small & Medium Enterprise (SME).
The project UNICOM will focus on further development of the International Standard Organisation’s (ISO) suite of IDMP (IDentification of Medicinal and pharmaceutical Products) standards, their testing, implementation and diffusion for regulatory purposes by National Drug Agencies, for global pharmacovigilance, and for advancing European cross-border ePrescription services as well as for improved patient safety and better healthcare. At the same time, it will benefit pharmaceutical companies applying for marketing authorisation of new products, providers of medicinal product dictionaries, clinical software producers including start-ups developing intelligent apps for patients, and last but not least patients and health professionals.
UNICOM includes 26 National Drug and eHealth Agencies, Standard Development Organisations (SDOs), providers of cross-border ePrescription services in the context of the EU Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) eHealth services, clinicians, software providers, producers of pharmaceutical dictionaries and others. A wide variety of relevant stakeholders are in-volved through their associations.empirica will coordinate and manage this endeavour and is responsible for impact assess-ment of European healthcare systems, exploitation and commercialisation strategies.
The project will be coordinated by the scientific coordination team around senior research fellow Prof. Dr. Karl A. Stroetmann, and the directors of empirica Dr. Veli Stroetmann, MD, and Dr. Rainer Thiel.
For further information, please see www.unicom-project.eu
