Federica Zanca and Orsolya Symmons, Programme Managers for the European Innovation Council, spoke with The Innovation Platform’s Maddie Hall to share the work of the EIC Pathfinder programme and its promise for advancing next-generation healthcare technologies.
The European Innovation Council (EIC) is main the way in which in advancing innovation throughout Europe by figuring out and supporting groundbreaking technologies from preliminary ideas to market entry. The EIC Pathfinder is step one within the EIC pathway, supporting early-stage, high-risk analysis and innovation on the forefront of science and know-how.
To acquire insights into the workings of the Pathfinder programme and discover its potential to ship next-generation healthcare technologies, The Innovation Platform Editor, Maddie Hall, interviewed two Programme Managers concerned within the EIC Pathfinder Programme. Federica Zanca leads the 2025 Pathfinder Challenge, titled ‘Generative AI-Based Agents to Revolutionise Medical Diagnosis and Treatment of Cancer’, aiming to combine AI technologies into healthcare in a method that successfully helps clinicians all through the whole scientific pathway. Meanwhile, Orsolya Symmons is main the 2026 Challenge on ‘Biotechnology for Healthy Ageing,’ which seeks to merge many years of analysis on ageing with breakthroughs in biotechnology.
Sharing insights into their roles, Federica and Orsolya delve into the intricacies of their tasks and look at how Pathfinder is positioned to help their ambitions. They highlighted the potential of deep tech and superior technologies to drive constructive change within the medical panorama.
Could you share a quick overview of yourselves and your roles as Programme Managers within the EIC?
F. As Programme Managers on the EIC, we act as brokers, connecting innovators, buyers, clinicians, trade leaders, and policymakers. Specifically, I’m accountable for shaping and steering the portfolio of medical technologies and AI in healthcare, aiming to translate deep tech into tangible impacts for sufferers and the healthcare system as a complete. Our function is to assist form problem scopes and portfolio technique, establish rising developments, construct a coherent portfolio throughout tasks that deal with the identical problem, and actively information them via the scientific, technological, regulatory, and scientific market landscapes.
O. Each programme supervisor is accountable for a particular space. For my half, I’ve labored as each a researcher and a biotech entrepreneur, in addition to in analysis administration, and now I oversee the well being and biotechnology space on the EIC. We attempt to deliver strategic cohesion to our portfolio by connecting the whole pipeline of various EIC devices from a technological perspective and fascinating with numerous stakeholders.
Can you clarify the EIC Pathfinder programme and its significance in supporting modern well being technologies? How does the EIC prioritise which technologies to help when choosing Pathfinder challenges, particularly in a quickly evolving discipline like healthcare innovation?
O. The EIC Pathfinder helps early-stage, high-risk, high-reward analysis at low Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs), as much as proof-of-concept. Like all EIC programmes, Pathfinder has a robust concentrate on deep tech, aiming to sort out concepts which are too unsure for conventional funding or non-public funding.
When designing challenges, we undertake a really integrative method, figuring out whether or not the know-how is an efficient match for the Pathfinder Programme by assessing the know-how itself, inspecting our current portfolio, and evaluating the technological maturity of improvements in particular fields. To do that, we map our current tasks in opposition to horizon scanning, conduct desk analysis, and leverage our personal background information. To guarantee we seize cutting-edge developments, we additionally use horizon scanning, professional enter, and Commission-wide intelligence.
The EIC is primarily an innovation and product-focused instrument. Therefore, we examine the limitations that might forestall these technologies from reaching the market. For occasion, within the well being sector, we goal to deal with technological challenges to beat current obstacles and to prioritise figuring out unmet well being wants and market potential to facilitate the long run adoption of those technologies.
F. We focus totally on transformative affect reasonably than short-term market readiness, planning for the subsequent 5 to 10 years, and anticipating future instructions in healthcare. Our emphasis is on know-how because the driving power, however we additionally deal with vital unmet scientific wants on the system degree. The high-risk side means these breakthrough concepts would possibly fail, but when they succeed, they might be recreation changers within the discipline.
Federica, you’re at the moment main the 2025 Pathfinder Challenge, Generative AI-Based Agents to Revolutionise Medical Diagnosis and Treatment of Cancer. Can you present an summary of the problem and its aims?
F. The name for Gen AI-based brokers in most cancers analysis and remedy goals to rework AI from an remoted instrument into agentic decision-support techniques that help clinicians in complicated environments, with clinicians retaining duty. Currently, most cancers remedy selections contain collaboration between medical doctors who every handle distinct information sorts, which might make it troublesome to successfully synthesise information for affected person care, significantly in uncommon circumstances.
The purpose is to develop superior AI techniques able to integrating multimodal information, akin to photos, genetic info, and numerous structured and unstructured scientific information. Unlike present AI instruments in radiology that merely analyse photos and produce static outputs, the subsequent technology of techniques will actively work together with clinicians, motive via complicated information, and match seamlessly into scientific workflows.
The challenge will deal with each technical and scientific challenges, looking for to create generative AI fashions that may be successfully utilized in observe. At its core is the thought of revolutionising most cancers analysis and remedy by shifting from static AI to extra interactive techniques. The hope is that, within the course of, we will lay the scientific and technological foundations for reliable AI, together with transparency, robustness, and scientific validation, which continues to be an energetic space of growth in lots of purposes.
Could you inform us extra concerning the tasks inside this Challenge and any progress to date? What’s subsequent for them following their inclusion within the Challenge?
F. Ultimately, we fund a portfolio of tasks reasonably than particular person ones. Our foremost goal is to create a coherent and complementary portfolio that facilitates cross-fertilisation of technologies.
We are at the moment evaluating over 200 challenge purposes for the Challenge, which has included a distant analysis adopted by a panel analysis in February that may deliver collectively a gaggle of vice-chair panellists, together with myself, to rank the tasks that meet our set threshold.
Projects should meet analysis thresholds and rating extremely; closing choice additionally considers portfolio-level aims (complementarity, protection of the problem scope), as described within the Work Programme. My focus is on making certain the challenge portfolio consists of numerous most cancers sorts, numerous technologies, and purposes throughout the scientific workflow, akin to analysis and remedy.
Therefore, the highest-ranked tasks will not be chosen except they supply numerous illustration throughout most cancers sorts and technologies, which is unlikely.
Following choice, the portfolio will collaboratively develop a strategic plan and set up frequent targets to successfully help the progress of all funded tasks.
Have you encountered any points within the adoption of AI technologies in scientific settings? Do you anticipate any particular challenges?
F. One of the important thing causes for launching this problem is the numerous bottleneck in adopting these technologies, largely because of the fragmentation of tool-based AI. For occasion, whereas there are AI purposes particularly designed for lung most cancers detection, most cancers shouldn’t be the one situation medical doctors take into account when inspecting a affected person’s chest. Therefore, regardless of AI help in a single discipline, guide work continues to be required to deal with different potential situations.
In this problem, we goal to deal with fragmentation by growing a complete instrument that helps each analysis and remedy, supporting scientific decision-making throughout elements of the pathway (e.g., triage, analysis, remedy planning), built-in into workflows.
Another impediment to adoption is the restricted scientific belief and transparency related to these instruments, usually perceived as black-box fashions. They usually lack explainability, resulting in resistance amongst medical professionals when they’re used.
There is usually a disconnect between AI builders and scientific workflows. Sometimes, these firms and power builders will not be carefully accustomed to scientific settings, which ends up in the event of implausible instruments that fail to combine successfully into the scientific processes, thereby limiting their utility.
Pathfinder is a crucial programme in scaling modern concepts to commercialisation. Orsolya, you may have expertise in scaling up a biotech firm. Can you present some insights into the practicalities and challenges of this, significantly for biotech firms? How does Pathfinder assist to deal with this problem?
O. Challenges differ based mostly on the technological space, the extent of maturity, and the expertise of the innovators concerned. The foremost difficulties are often not associated to the know-how growth itself. Instead, the actual impediment incessantly lies in getting individuals to view their know-how as a product and to develop enterprise methods that seize an actual market alternative.
Innovators have to concentrate on understanding buyer wants and on how they’ll deal with them, figuring out their aggressive benefit, and contemplating why nobody else has solved this downside.
At the Pathfinder stage, this may require a shift in mindset as innovators set up proof of idea for their know-how and put together to transition from analysis in an educational atmosphere to doubtlessly beginning their very own firms. Accordingly, in addition they have to ponder sensible issues akin to methods to shield their improvements, methods to construct a enterprise, who will personal the innovation, and the place the long run funding will come from. In observe, Pathfinder is step one to assist facilitate this shift from a purely research-focused mindset to at least one that’s oriented in direction of commercialisation.
In 2026, you’re main the Pathfinder Challenge in Biotechnology for Healthy Ageing. Could you present an summary of this Challenge and why it was chosen?
O. The initiative is motivated by our ageing society and the end result of many years of analysis that has established a strong scientific basis for understanding the mechanisms of ageing. The discipline is now primed for translational developments supported by know-how. By specializing in this translational well being side, the problem enhances earlier funding calls by the European Commission, which tackled necessary areas, akin to societal components associated to ageing, selling digital options for the aged, and investigating age-related illness development.
The problem is constructed on three pillars. One key focus addresses the truth that ageing usually results in a number of age-related ailments occurring concurrently. We goal to discover technological interventions that concentrate on the underlying molecular and mobile pathways of ageing, finally growing health-based proof-of-concept research for scientific interventions that might goal the foundation reason behind a number of age-related ailments, reasonably than tackling every illness individually.
Moreover, the problem recognises that it’s not nearly growing these interventions but in addition about making use of them to the correct particular person on the proper time. In addition to looking for intervention tasks, there are two further pillars: one is the event of biomarkers to establish when interventions must be launched and to trace their effectiveness. The different is making a toolkit, akin to non-animal fashions, to evaluate these interventions in numerous settings, whether or not in animal fashions, in vitro (in a dish), or via digital means.
This portfolio method fosters collaboration between these growing interventions and people targeted on biomarkers, encouraging scientific alternate and public consciousness of the ageing difficulty. The foremost problem we anticipate considerations regulatory pathways, since ageing shouldn’t be categorized as a illness, which might complicate scientific trials.
What is the anticipated timeline for Challenge over the subsequent 12 months? Could you elaborate on what you hope to attain and any preparation that’s already underway?
O. As is obvious from each challenges, the timelines are prolonged. From the decision’s opening to the challenge’s precise launch, it takes a couple of 12 months and a half.
Overall, these Pathfinder tasks will take roughly 4 to 5 years every to succeed in the proof-of-concept stage. However, we goal for these tasks to be recreation changers for the whole discipline we’re concentrating on. By having tasks work collectively, we will create assets and foster acceptance of the improvements they’re pursuing. This collaboration will assist advance innovation and doubtlessly streamline commercialisation processes, resulting in a broader affect that extends past particular person tasks.
F. As we transfer ahead, we wish to see the tasks concerned in Pathfinder transition into the subsequent section, EIC Transition, which generally takes two to a few years, after which advance to the EIC Accelerator stage. In the previous, we haven’t seen many tasks progress via this pathway, which is comprehensible because the accelerator solely started as a pilot programme round 2020/21. However, we wish to see extra tasks transition via the system, and efforts are underway to discover new methods to streamline this course of, fostering collaboration inside a portfolio context to boost useful resource growth and the acceptance of those improvements.
How do you incorporate studying from earlier Pathfinder challenges? How a lot crossover is there between your two challenges?
O. We have each inherited Pathfinder problem portfolios that kicked off in earlier years, via which we gained sensible insights into how to make sure tasks collaborate successfully, how a lot supervision is required, and methods to set the correct expectations throughout our preliminary calls.
F. Today, tasks have a a lot clearer understanding of their roles inside the portfolio. We have realized helpful classes over time about managing portfolios and the strategic plans that accompany them.
Both of us needed to method well being as a unified discipline, with every of us overlaying our respective areas of experience, whereas additionally recognising that many tasks might combine biotech and medtech approaches. For occasion, an innovation could also be deeply rooted in biotechnology, however finally, it goals to develop a medical machine.
In our collaboration, we’re actively looking for to establish subjects and stakeholders the place each our fields are related. Over the previous 12 months, we have now engaged in actions in nanomedicine and girls’s well being, in addition to in superior supplies. We collectively work on collaborations, for instance, with EMA and different organisations like EuroBioImaging.
O. When you’re a affected person, you don’t differentiate between improvements in biotech or med tech. These options have to be built-in with each other. This perspective has tremendously influenced our collaboration as we try to be taught from one another’s fields and the work we’re doing individually, in addition to establish areas the place our technologies intersect. In these cases, our collaboration turns into very hands-on. We talk incessantly, and this ongoing dialogue is essential for maximising the affect of our innovators and finally benefiting sufferers throughout Europe.
In your opinion, what may be the subsequent EIC focus inside well being and biotechnology? Can you share any insights on rising developments or upcoming tasks?
F. It’s usually too early to make definitive predictions, as EIC’s strategic intelligence sometimes begins in January to find out what will be the subsequent steps. However, we’re more and more observing an increase in deep technologies inside the healthcare sector that mix {hardware}, software program, and intelligence, together with AI and ambient information from the atmosphere, such because the room or dwelling you might be in.
This shift is aimed toward shifting from episodic healthcare (the place remedy is offered solely when a particular well being difficulty arises) to a mannequin that emphasises preventive care and, much more importantly, steady and linked well being administration.
For occasion, a foundational AI mannequin of the human physique, offered on the MICAAI convention, utilises numerous sensors, akin to smartwatches or good patches, to gather and combine info, finally making a digital twin that includes real-time information.
O. We are nonetheless at a stage the place we’re exploring know-how from numerous views and assessing present developments. Artificial intelligence is turning into more and more pervasive. This will probably be an attention-grabbing space to watch, making certain we don’t duplicate efforts already underway elsewhere.
Conclusion
The EIC Pathfinder programme is an important instrument for advancing modern well being technologies that may considerably enhance affected person care and scientific decision-making. The emphasis on transformative, high-risk tasks permits for groundbreaking developments which will redefine the way forward for healthcare. If you’re desirous about studying extra, go to the EIC Pathfinder web site or uncover extra concerning the tasks talked about on this article: Generative AI-Based Agents to Revolutionise Medical Diagnosis and Treatment of Cancer, and Biotechnology for Healthy Ageing.
Please word, this text may also seem within the twenty fifth version of our quarterly publication.