Innovative Medicines Initiative

The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) is a European funding scheme, which invests €2 billion and encourages “academic groups, small enterprises and not-for-profit agencies to join forces with multinational pharmaceutical companies and lay the groundwork for new therapies”.

So far there have only been 3 Irish people involved in the programme. A reason for this could be from our lack of experience of interaction with large pharmaceutical companies. With Ireland’s large investments over the last 7 or 8 years, it is time for us to reap the benefits. We have huge potential with regards to research and this investment could ideal for boosting our levels of research. This fund was developed as more pharmaceutical companies are searching for cheaper labour outside of Europe. With this in place, Europe is hoping to improve research in the early stages, so there will be fewer failures in the clinical trials phase, and thus saving money.


Source - http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/innovation/2010/0305/1224265343581.html