The Flagship Initiative aims to foster systemic innovation that helps to overcome major challenges for the economy and society. In addition, its purpose is to strengthen the competitiveness of the Swiss economy and/or contribute to the wellbeing of society by creating new value along the value chain by increasing efficiencies, reducing costs or re-solving socially relevant challenges in the public interest.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is having a significant impact on our world in many different ways. AI is seen as an engine of productivity and economic growth, and can help to address global challenges such as climate change, resource scarcity and health crises. For the Swiss economy and society, AI applications will create new opportunities for growth and development and will help to solve some of the most pressing problems facing our world today.
The Flagship topic of the 2024 call is therefore:
Artificial Intelligence in Life Sciences with a Focus on Human Health
Today, AI has already generated innovations in key areas of human health such as drug discovery, genomic data analysis, precision medicine and personalised medicine, as well as multimodal large language models and protein language models. Switzerland has the potential to take a leading position in developing innovative solutions with AI in order to solve challenges and create value for human health.
AI is expected to have a significant impact on all economic and societal sectors, and it is crucial that Swiss companies and universities strengthen their leading position in innovation. Innovation support in such significant emerging technologies is of utmost importance for Switzerland as it drives economic growth, enabling the country to maintain its competitive edge and leading position in the global market. It will enable Switzerland to pursue its key role in important sectors with high added value such as pharmaceuticals , biotechnology, medical technology, diagnostics and patient monitoring as well as patient management solutions .
The necessity for an interdisciplinary approach and the ability to generate systemic innovation makes the Flagship Initiative perfectly suited to the generation of valuable solutions. These solutions must have a decisive impact and be accepted by society and the economy. This means that the social, legal and regulatory aspects cannot be neglected.
Switzerland has a strong AI ecosystem, with a close-knit network of leading AI research institutes, ambitious start-ups and established industrial companies. Therefore, Innosuisse
invites research and implementation partners to form consortia and submit applications for the 2024 Flagship call “Artificial Intelligence in Life Sciences with a Focus on Human Health”.
