Newly launched SENET project will enhance EU-China health collaboration

The kick-off meeting of the EU project SENET – Sino-European Health Networking Hub – took place on April 15^th – 16^th 2019 in Shanghai, bringing together 5 European and 4 Chinese project partners to enhance cooperation between the EU and China on health research and innovation topics. The two-day plenary meeting focused on the results already achieved and future important actions to be carried out.

Medical advances have taken place rapidly since the beginning of globalisation, challenged by the development of chronic, infectious and rare diseases as well as the emergence of new diseases. As the health research field is an area where countries have a lot of gain from closer cooperation and sharing their knowledge and skills on common health sectors priorities, SENET intends to promote cooperation between the EU and China by increasing the mobility of Chinese health-researchers and collaboration in joint research programme under Horizon 2020 and future programmes.

Through participation in Horizon 2020, China and the EU can benefit by accessing knowledge and research data and by connecting with scientific networks and research teams. Therefore, both the EU and China are further working together in a strategic way on a selected number of priority areas of interest and benefits for both sides.

The two-day kick-off meeting was an opportunity for all the European and Chinese project partners to further identify health priorities, tackle barriers for mobility and improve reciprocity issues between China and EU Member States. The consortium is currently working on a scoping paper identifying health research and cooperation priorities, good practices and obstacles to participation in collaborative projects and to the mobility of researchers.

Considering the necessity to propose tailored solutions to answer these challenges, SENET will involve health research and innovation experts in a proactive way during the project lifetime. SENET will form three Expert Groups: Policy Making Expert Group, Policy Implementation Expert Group and Research & Innovation Expert Group. Thus, SENET intends to build a health research and innovation network addressing the whole value chain of health R&I: programme owners, policy makers, entrepreneurs and SMEs, science, technology and innovation structures and individuals and others are welcome to join the SENET Hub and its Expert Groups.

Thus, health R&I actors are encouraged to provide input regarding the project’s outcomes and results, based on their experiences and skills. They will participate in the design of a roadmap and an action plan for enhancing EU-China health research and innovation collaboration and some proof of concept of new funding schemes, improving researcher’s participation in Horizon 2020 and further programmes.

At the meeting the partners also had the opportunity to meet Cathy Zheng and Kate Guo from the Shanghai Technology Innovation Center and Elsie Chen from Invest Shanghai who presented opportunities for possible collaborations to the SENET consortium.

A big thank you to the Shanghai Technology Innovation Center for hosting the SENET meeting!