Health Pilot

The proposed project must involve several partners. The application must be submitted by the Project Owner on behalf of all the partners in the partnership constellation. The Project Owner must be either

• an enterprise in the public sector with an organisation number in Norway and representing the health and care sector (including municipalities). See the definition of public sector body.

or

• a company that is registered in the Norwegian Register of Business Enterprises and carries out economic activity in Norway

Universities and university colleges are not eligible to apply, i.e. be the Project Owner.

Sole proprietorships, clusters, industry organisations and technology transfer offices are not eligible to apply, i.e. be the Project Owner.

Requirements relating to partners and roles

If the Project Owner submitting the application is a company, collaboration with at least one public entity registered with an organisation number in Norway is required. This entity must represent the health and care sector (municipalities are included).

If the Project Owner is a public entity, collaboration with at least one company registered in the Norwegian Register of Business Enterprises and whose economic activity in Norway is required. Sole proprietorships, clusters, trade associations and technology transfer offices cannot be partners.

Partners are involved in effective collaboration with the Project Owner, which means that they share both the risk in the project and the results that emerge from it. They will also contribute with own financing. The partners and Project Owner are to enter into a consortium agreement. This agreement must regulate the rights to use and commercial exploitation of the results.

Norwegian and international research organisations, expert communities or R&D performing companies may participate in the project as R&D providers with responsibility for performing R&D work on behalf of the Project Owner and the partners. R&D providers are not to contribute to project funding and do not normally have rights to project results. They deliver work on assignment and will receive a market price for this. If they are to retain rights to project results, the market value of the rights they retain must be deducted from the price of the services they provide.

Relevant user organisations, clusters, non-governmental sectors, sole proprietorships and/or other relevant actors may participate in the project as sub-contractors. The sub-contractors' roles in the project are to be described in the project description, and the costs must be entered in the grant application for either the Project Owner or the partner.

Please note that the Project Owner and partners must be independent of each other, which means that one cannot have controlling influence over the other. This follows from the definition of partner in our General Terms and Conditions for R&D Projects (see link below), compared with the definition of effective collaboration. Nor may suppliers of R&D have controlling influence over or be controlled by the Project Owner or partners. By controlling influence, we mean that one has a majority shareholding or can otherwise control the other.

The application with the relevant partners and R&D providers at the time of application submission is the starting point for – and a crucial condition for – the allocation of funding. If you make changes to the project composition prior to entering into a contract, our funding commitment may be withdrawn.

Requirements relating to the project manager

It will benefit the project if the project manager has previous experience from public-private innovation cooperation. The project manager's professional competence and suitability to carry out the project will be assessed by the referee panel.

Requirements relating to user participation

User participation and user knowledge are usually important to succeed in innovation work. In this context, by users we mean patients and/or citizens, professional users/user organisations and/or those who will provide the service (employees). In Health Pilot projects, we expect you to plan for user participation, and the user perspective should be clearly stated in the project description. If user participation is not included in the project, you must clearly state in the application why this is not relevant to your project.

The Research Council's support for Pilot Health projects is only to be used for R&D activities. The project description must outline a plan for implementation, scaling and commercialisation, but we do not provide funding to cover the costs for these activities.

Support awarded to companies and other undertakings (either as Project Owner or partner) constitutes state aid, and the R&D activities awarded funding must be industrial research or experimental development as defined in the state aid rules (see "Article 25: Important definitions" of our page Conditions for awarding state aid). In the application form's progress plan, you must categorise R&D activities by selecting either "Industrial research" or "Experimental development" from the drop-down menu.

The Research Council does not provide support for activities of an operational nature and for measures to exploit the R&D results, such as protection of intellectual property rights, market surveys and marketing and production/completion of products and services to be marketed.

Funding awarded to public actors is to be used for R&D activities and activities that are necessary to adapt the organisation, systems and work processes so that the solution(s) developed in the project can be procured and implemented after completion of the R&D project. In the application form's progress plan, you must mark the R&D activities as "Main activity".

You can apply for funding to cover the following project costs that are actual costs and that are necessary to carry out the project:

• Payroll and indirect expenses
• Procurement of R&D services from expert communities/research organisations
• Equipment (rental/depreciation for instruments and equipment)
• Other operating expenses

You will find detailed and important information about what the budget should contain on the website. All project costs are to be budgeted in accordance with the Research Council's guidelines. You can also read more about this on that page.

For applications awarded funding, the final funding amount will be determined when we enter into a contract with you. You will be offered a conditional allocation with the condition of preparing a revised application in accordance with the award decision, cf. the bullet points below.

Conditions for funding

Our prerequisites for the award can be found in General terms and conditions for R&D projects. For projects awarded funding under this call, this includes the requirement for an annual project account report documenting incurred project costs and their financing.

The Research Council requires that the project is carried out in effective collaboration between the Project Owner and the partners. The Project Owner and the partners must enter into a consortium agreement that regulates the distribution of the rights to use and commercial utilisation of the results.

The call for proposals has been approved as an aid scheme by the EFTA Surveillance Authority (ESA) and has the reference: GBER 72/2023/R&D&I.

• The scheme is to be practised in accordance with the EEA state aid rules. Conditions and concepts are to be interpreted in accordance with corresponding conditions and concepts in the state aid rules. In the event of conflict between the call for proposals and the state aid rules, the latter will take precedence. For the same reason, the call for proposals may be adjusted.
• Funding awarded to undertakings is awarded in accordance with Article 25 of the General Block Exemption Regulation (Commission Regulation (EU) No 651/2014). In addition, the general conditions set out in Chapter I of the Regulation must be met. See the General Block Exemption Regulation in a consolidated version as amended up to and including July 2020.
• State aid may not be awarded to undertakings that have not met the repayment requirements pursuant to a prior decision by the EFTA Surveillance Authority/the European Commission declaring aid illegal and incompatible with the internal market. Nor may aid be awarded to undertakings in difficulty under EEA law.
• The companies participating in the project must submit a declaration confirming that they are eligible to receive state aid.
• Allocated state aid of EUR 500 000 or more will be published in the Register of State Aid.
• Other public funding to cover the same eligible costs may affect the amount of support from the Research Council.
• When the Project Owner knows that the project will be awarded funding, any partners that are listed or have applied to be admitted to trading on the stock exchange must be informed of the funding, so that they can assess whether the allocation of project funds is sensitive information.

The contact persons below constitute the reference group for the Health Pilot scheme. The individuals represent the specialist and primary health services throughout the country. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions about whether your project fits the purpose of the call or if you need help getting in touch with the right professional environment/service level in the health service.

The application must be created and submitted via "My RCN web". You can change and submit your application several times up to the application deadline. We recommend that you submit your application as soon as you have completed the application form and uploaded the mandatory attachments. When the application deadline expires, we will process the most recently submitted version of the application.

• Grant applications and all attachments must be submitted in Norwegian or English. You will find all application templates at the end of the call.
• All attachments must be in PDF format.
• Enter the ES number of any application for a pre-project in the field "Other relevant programmes/activities/projects" (numbers both for applications that were granted and those that were not granted must be entered).

Mandatory attachments

The mandatory attachments must be written in designated templates that you will find at the end of the call.

• Project description, maximum 15 pages (to come later)
• Partner data (for businesses only)
• CV for the project manager and other key participants in the project, maximum four pages per CV

Applications that do not meet the above requirements may be rejected.

All attachments to the application must be submitted together with the application. We do not accept attachments submitted after the application deadline unless we have requested additional documentation.

Documents and websites linked to in the application, or attachments other than those specified above will not be considered.

There is no technical validation for the content of the attachments you upload, so be sure to upload the correct file for the correct attachment type.

We assess applications in light of the objectives of the call and on the basis of the following criteria:

Once the applications have been received, we will first carry out a preliminary assessment to check that all formal requirements have been met. Grant applications that do not satisfy the formal requirements may be rejected.

Step 1

Following a preliminary assessment, grant applications will be assessed on the basis of the criterion "Relevance to the call for proposals" by the Research Council's case officers. The assessment is presented to a reference group with representatives from the regional health authorities, KS and SIVA. Applications with clearly weak relevance for Health Pilot will not proceed to Step 2.

Step 2

Grant applications that are considered relevant to Health Pilot and that satisfy the formal requirements and guidelines set out in the call will be distributed to referees with relevant expertise.

For each application, we check that the referees are impartial and have sufficient expertise in the application's thematic area. The referees assess the criteria "Research and innovation", "Impact" and "Implementation". The referees' assessments are of decisive importance for whether the project can be awarded funding.

Decisions of the portfolio board

The Research Council administration will then submit the grant applications and assessments for decision by the Research Council's portfolio board for Health. The portfolio board will attach importance to achieving a balanced project portfolio within its areas of responsibility and the thematic priorities set out in the call, also in light of ongoing projects and any applications submitted for other calls for proposals. These assessments will be based on the budget framework, the call text, the portfolio plan and the letter of allocation from the Ministry of Health and Care Services. In particular, the ministry has asked the Research Council to prioritise implementation and impact research.

The portfolio board will also apply the Research Council's general policy for allocation of funding, i.e. we will assess the grant applications on the basis of

• research ethics requirements;
• prioritisation of projects on the basis of their impact on sustainability and the environment, assuming all other quality-related factors are essentially equal.

We expect to publish which applications will be awarded funding in February 2024.