💰 Funding Details

Funding Overview

The Horizon Europe Cluster 1 – Health two-stage call “HORIZON-HLTH-2025-03-STAYHLTH-01” allocates up to €50 million per project under the HORIZON-RIA Lump-Sum Grant model.

Key Features

- Lump-sum financing: budget fixed at Grant Agreement Preparation; no subsequent cost reporting.

- Two-stage competition: blind 1st stage (5-page Part B) → invited full proposal.

- Funding rate: 100 % of eligible costs, paid in instalments linked to work-package completion.

- Indicative duration: 48–60 months; consortia usually 8–15 entities from at least 3 eligible states.

- Thematic focus: Early diagnosis, prevention, reversal or mitigation of intellectual disabilities (ID), integrated care, empowerment of persons with ID and their carers.

Eligibility Snapshot

- Legal entities from your country and all EU Member/Associated States are fully eligible.

- US participants are eligible for funding (NIH reciprocity).

- Non-EU countries may participate with self-funding or specific bilateral schemes.

Complementarity

Synergies are encouraged with Cluster 2 topic *HORIZON-CL2-2025-01-TRANSFO-09* (autonomy of persons with disabilities).

📊 Evaluation Criteria

Evaluation Deep-Dive

| Criterion | Stage 1 Weight | Evaluators Expect |

|-----------|---------------|-------------------|

| Excellence | 50 % | Ambitious objectives, sound & innovative methodology, SSH integration, sex/gender analysis, clear progress beyond state-of-the-art. |

| Impact | 50 % | Credible pathway to expected outcomes, robust exploitation/communication, EU dimension, stakeholder engagement. |

At Stage 2 the following is added:

| Criterion | Threshold | Focus |

|-----------|-----------|-------|

| Implementation | 4/5 | Work-plan quality, consortium expertise, risk & data management, lump-sum soundness, open-science commitments. |

Thresholds: 4/5 per criterion; cumulative ≥ 12 at Stage 2. First-stage anonymity is mandatory—remove all organisation names, logos and personnel identifiers from the abstract and Part B.

📝 Application Strategy

Winning Application Strategy

1. Co-create with the ID community: embed persons with ID, family carers and advocacy NGOs in proposal design, governance and dissemination.

2. Build a multidisciplinary powerhouse: integrate genomics, neurodevelopmental biology, digital health engineering, social sciences & humanities (SSH) and health-economics; explicitly map SSH contributions in Part B.

3. Dual-axis work plan:

- *Axis A – Disease-modifying innovation*: gene therapy, precision pharmacology, AI-based early biomarkers.

- *Axis B – Care & empowerment*: cognitively accessible apps, respite-care models, scalable caregiver training.

4. Gender & intersectionality mainstreaming: plan sex-disaggregated analyses and address vulnerabilities of women carers and ID girls.

5. Master the lump-sum logic: define measurable deliverables (e.g. “First-in-human dose completed”) to unlock payments; attach internal cost matrix as evidence.

6. Show EU added value: justify transnational scale (e.g. rare trisomy registries pooling >2 000 patients across your country and partners).

7. Policy & regulatory pathway: align with WHO ICD-11, UN CRPD and the European Disability Strategy 2030; include a policy uptake package targeting ministries in your country.

💡 Success Factors

Patient-Led Design Paradigm

Establish a governance model where persons with ID and carers hold voting rights in steering committees, ensuring relevance and empowerment.

Pan-European Multi-Cohort Data Sharing

Link biobanks, registries and clinical cohorts through FAIR principles, enabling statistically powered discovery and early regulatory dialogue.

Robust Clinical & Ethical Governance

Secure early ethics approvals, GDPR-compliant data flows and a Data Safety Monitoring Board, demonstrating readiness for human studies.

Synergy With your country Health Policy Pilots

Embed demonstration sites within ongoing national integrated-care reforms, accelerating uptake and showcasing EU added value.

Scalable Exploitation & Business Planning

Present clear routes to adoption—market analysis, reimbursement pathways, open-source or licensing models—supported by Letters of Intent from payers.

❌ Common Mistakes to Avoid

Breaching Blind-Evaluation Anonymity

Using organisation names, acronyms or logos in the 1st-stage abstract/Part B leads to immediate ineligibility under the pilot blind procedure.

Superficial Social-Sciences Integration

Failing to allocate concrete tasks and budget for SSH experts (e.g. ethicists, disability sociologists) weakens both *Excellence* and *Impact* scores.

Ignoring Comorbidities and Sex Differences

Proposals focused solely on core ID symptoms without addressing comorbidities (e.g. epilepsy, mental health) or sex-specific manifestations appear clinically naive.

Generic Caregiver Work Packages

Listing broad training activities without evidence-based curricula, measurable outcomes or alignment with carers’ real needs results in low credibility.

Weak Lump-Sum Deliverable Definition

Deliverables phrased as ongoing activities (e.g. “Research conducted”) are not acceptable for lump-sum payments; they must be **tangible, verifiable outputs**.

Neglecting Regulatory and Standardisation Pathways

Absence of a plan for EMA/IVDR compliance, data standards or CE-marking raises feasibility concerns for health technologies.

Improving the quality of life of persons with intellectual disabilities and their families

Quick Facts for Netherlands Applicants

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