The Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), BpifranceFinancement (a public investment bank) and Indo-French Centre for Promotion of Advanced Research (CEFIPRA) have jointly invited joint expression of interest (EOI) on digital health from Indian and French SME companies and start-ups in the area of red biotechnology upto commercialisation.

The project proposal will be focused on development of industrial application oriented health technologies in the areas of digital healthcare such as ehealth, tele-monitoring, tele-care connected health, health IT, Big data, e-patients, internet of M-health things “m-IoT”, 4Ghealth; and individualized medicine such as development of therapeutic solutions for individual patients, repaired human and pharmacogenetics.

The main objectives of the programme are to support high-quality bilateral research projects that combine innovative approaches towards new concepts and technological development; and to encourage and enable Indo-French collaboration between industry- industry linkages or industry-industry-academia linkages.

The project should have at least one company from India and one from France each as joint applicant. A registered company from India along with the registered company from France or vis-à-vis shall be the joint applicants (1+1 model). The applicant could be start-up / SME company of both regions. They can have co-applicants and collaborators from academia, research institution, national laboratory, clinical establishment, for profit company, not-for-profit organisation, society, LLP, trust or foundation.

CEFIPRA is India’s first and France’s only bilateral organisation; while BIRAC is a public sector undertaking ‘not-for-profit company’ under ministry of science & technology, government of India and BpifranceFinancement is a public investment bank.