Health Pilot

It is a requirement that several partners are behind the application. The application must be submitted by the Project Owner on behalf of all partners in the collaboration consortium. The Project Owner must be either: 

• a public sector enterprise with an organisation number in Norway and which represents the health and care sector (including municipalities). See the definition of public sector.  

or 

• a business that is registered in the Norwegian Register of Business Enterprises and has economic activity in Norway 

Universities and university colleges cannot apply, i.e. be the Project Owner. 

Sole proprietorships, clusters, industry associations and technology transfer offices cannot be applicants. In other words, they cannot be the Project Owner or partners. 

Project employees who are to be paid by the project must be employed by the Project Owner or by one of the partners. 

Requirements for partners and roles 

If the Project Owner submitting the application is a company, collaboration with at least one public sector body that is registered with an organisation number in Norway is required. This enterprise must represent the health and care sector (municipalities are included). 

If the Project Owner is a public enterprise, collaboration with at least one enterprise that is registered in the Norwegian Register of Business Enterprises, and that has economic activity in Norway, is required. Sole proprietorships, clusters, industry associations and technology transfer offices cannot be partners. 

Collaborating partners enter into effective collaboration with the Project Owner, which means, among other things, that they share both the risk associated with the project and the results that emerge from it. They will also contribute with own financing. The collaborating partners and the Project Owner must enter into a consortium agreement. This agreement must govern the rights to use and commercial exploitation of the results. 

Norwegian and foreign research organisations, expert groups or R&D-performing companies may participate in the project as R&D providers, with responsibility for carrying out R&D work on behalf of the Project Owner and the collaborating partners. R&D providers are not required to contribute financially to the project and do not normally retain rights to the project results. They perform work on assignment at market rates. However, if they are to retain any rights to the results, the market value of those rights must be deducted from the price of the services they provide. 

Relevant user organisations, clusters, the voluntary sector, sole proprietorships and/or other relevant actors may participate in the project as subcontractors. The subcontractors' roles in the project must be described in the project description, and the costs must be entered in either the Project Owner or the collaborating partner's budget in the application. Sole proprietorships and limited liability companies without employees can only contribute to the project with smaller assignments. 

Note that the Project Owner and collaborating partners must be independent of each other, which means that one cannot have a controlling influence over the other. This aligns with the definition of partner in our General Terms and Conditions for R&D Projects, and with the definition of actual collaboration. Nor may R&D providers have a controlling influence over, or be controlled by, the Project Owner or partner. By controlling influence, we mean that one has a majority of shares or can otherwise control the other.    

It is the application with the relevant collaborating partners and R&D providers at the time of application that is the starting point for – and a decisive condition for – the allocation of funding. If you make changes to the project details before entering into a contract, funding can be withdrawn. 

Requirements relating to the project manager 

It is an advantage if the project manager has previous experience from public-private innovation collaboration. The project manager's professional competence and suitability to carry out the project will be assessed by the expert panel. 

Requirements for user participation 

User participation and user knowledge are usually important for success in innovation work. In this context, we mean patients and/or citizens, professional users/user organisations and/or those who will deliver the service (employees). In Health Pilot projects, we expect you to encourage user participation, and the user perspective should be clearly stated in the project description. If user participation is not included in the project, it must be clearly stated in the application why this is not relevant to your project. 

The Research Council's funding for Health Pilot projects is only to be used for R&D activities. In the project description, you must outline a plan for implementation, scaling and commercialisation, but we do not finance costs for these activities. 

Aid to companies and other enterprises (either as Project Owner or partner) constitutes state aid, and the R&D activities supported must be industrial research or experimental development as defined in the state aid rules (see "Article 25: Important definitions" on our state aid page). In the application form's progress plan, you must categorise the R&D activities by selecting either "Industrial research" or "Experimental development" from the drop-down menu.  

We do not provide support for activities of an operational nature and for measures to exploit the R&D results, such as protection of intellectual property rights, market research and marketing and production/completion of products and services to be marketed. 

Support to public actors must be allocated to R&D activities and to activities necessary for adapting the organisation, systems, and work processes to enable procurement and implementation of the developed solution(s) after the R&D project is completed. 

In the progress plan of the application form, you must mark the R&D activities as "Main activity". 

You can apply for funding to cover the following project costs that are actual costs and that are necessary to carry out the project: 

• Payroll and indirect expenses 
• Procurement of R&D  
• Equipment 
• Other operating expenses 

You will find detailed and important information about what to enter in the project budget on the website. All project costs must be budgeted in accordance with the Research Council's guidelines. 

We will not support undocumented costs, such as your own unpaid work. You must therefore not include such costs in the project budget. 

Scope of support 

The degree of funding for project expenses from public agencies is limited to 80 per cent of approved project expenses. 

The degree of support for the company's project expenses depends on the company's size and type of R&D activities. We do not provide additional support for actual collaboration. The aid intensity may therefore vary from 25 to 70 per cent, cf. the state aid rules (see Article 25: Aid for research and development projects, EU's definition of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and the table below).  

For applications that receive funding, the support will be determined when we enter into a contract with you. You will receive an offer of a conditional grant allocation on the condition that the applicant revises the application in accordance with the allocation decision, cf. the bullet points below. 

Conditions for funding 

Projects must start between 1 January 2026 and 15 August 2026, and you must apply for funding from the Research Council from 2026. The latest permitted project completion date is 14 August 2030. 

Our conditions for funding can be found in the General Terms and Conditions for R&D Projects. For projects awarded funding under this call, financial reports documenting accrued project costs and funding sources must be submitted annually.  

We assume that the project is carried out in effective collaboration between the Project Owner and the collaborating partners. The Project Owner and the partners must enter into a consortium agreement that regulates the allocation of rights related to the use and commercial exploitation of the results. 

Support for a research organisation must go to the organisation's non-economic activity. It therefore does not constitute state aid. The Research Council assumes that the necessary accounting separation is in place. Aid to "undertakings" constitutes state aid. In this context, an undertaking means any actor that engages in economic activity by offering goods and/or services in a market. When an undertaking is to have part of its project costs covered, either as a Project Owner or as a partner in the project, this must be done in accordance with Article 25 of the General Block Exemption Regulation (Commission Regulation (EU) No 651/2014). Read more about state aid.  

The call for proposals has been notified as an aid scheme to the EFTA Surveillance Authority (ESA) and has the reference: GBER xx/202x/R&D&I (reference forthcoming). 

• The scheme must be practised in accordance with the EEA Agreement's state aid rules. Terms and concepts shall be interpreted in accordance with the corresponding terms and concepts in the aid rules. In the event of any conflict between the announcement and the state aid rules, the latter shall take precedence. For the same reason, the call for proposals may also be adjusted. 
• The aid that goes to companies is awarded in accordance with Article 25 of the General Block Exemption Regulation (Commission Regulation (EU) No 651/2014). In addition, the general conditions in Chapter I of the Regulation must be met. See the Consolidated Block Exemption Regulation with amendments up to and including July 2020.   
• Aid may not be granted to undertakings that have not complied with the requirements for repayment following a previous decision by the ESA/EU Commission declaring the aid illegal and incompatible with the internal market. Nor may aid be granted to undertakings in difficulty within the meaning of EEA law. 
• The companies participating in the project must submit a self-declaration confirming that they are eligible to receive state aid. 
• State aid awarded of €500,000 or more will be published in the "Register of State Aid". 
• Other public funding to cover the same eligible costs may affect the scope of the Research Council's funding. 
• When the Project Owner knows that the project will be awarded funding, they must inform any partners that are listed on the Stock Exchange or have applied to be admitted to trading on the Oslo Stock Exchange, so that partners can assess whether the allocation of project funds constitutes market sensitive information. 

In addition, you must be aware of the following if you should receive an award from us: 

• The Research Council's conditions for funding can also be found in our General Terms and Conditions for R&D Projects on the information page What the contract involves.  
• The Research Council requires full and immediate open access for scientific articles, see Plan S - open access to publications.  
• For all projects that handle data, the Project Owner must prepare a data management plan in connection with the revised application, where you will find more information about the requirements for data management plans in projects that receive funding from us.  
• For medical and health studies involving humans, the Research Council sets special requirements and guidelines for prospective registration of studies and publication of results. 

The application must be based on a pre-project submitted by the deadline of 16 October 2024. 

The application must be created and submitted via My RCN Web. You can change and submit the application several times until the application deadline. We recommend that you submit your application as soon as you have completed the application form and uploaded the required attachments. When the application deadline expires, it is the latest version of the application that we process. 

• The application and all attachments must be written in Norwegian or English. You will find all application templates at the bottom of the call. 
• All attachments must be in PDF format. 
• Enter the 6-digit project number for your pre-project in the field "Other relevant programmes/activities/projects". 

Mandatory attachments 

• Project description, maximum 15 pages. Use the default template that you can download at the bottom of the page. 
• CV for the project manager and other key participants in the project. Use the default template that you can download at the bottom of the page. All CVs should be collected in a PDF file before it is uploaded. 
• Letters of intent from partners 
• Partner details (for companies only) 

Applications that do not meet the requirements above may be rejected. 

All attachments to the application must be submitted with the application. We do not accept attachments submitted after the application deadline unless we have requested additional documentation. 

We will not consider documents and websites linked to in the application, or attachments other than those specified above. Be careful to upload the correct attachment type, as there are no technical restrictions on what kind of templates it is possible to upload in the application form. 

Applications will be assessed in light of the purpose of the call and the following criteria:

Once the application deadline has expired, we will first carry out a preliminary assessment to check that all formal requirements are met, first and foremost that the applicant has completed a pre-project. Applications that do not satisfy the formal requirements may be rejected. 

Applications will be distributed to external referees with relevant expertise. 

For each application, we check that the referees are impartial and have expertise in the application's thematic area. The referees assess the criteria "Excellence", "Impact ", "Implementation" and "Relevance to the call". The referees’ assessments are crucial importance for whether the project can be awarded funding. 

Decisions by the portfolio board 

The administration then submits the applications and assessments for decision to the Research Council's portfolio board for health. The portfolio board aims to balance the portfolio of projects within its areas of responsibility and the thematic priorities set out in the call, also in light of ongoing projects and any applications for other calls. These assessments will be based on budget frameworks, the call text, the portfolio plan and the letter of allocation from the Ministry of Health and Care Services. In particular, the Ministry has asked the Research Council to prioritise implementation and impact research. 

The portfolio board will also base its assessment on the Research Council's general policy for the allocation of funding, i.e. we will assess the applications based on 

• Requirements for research ethics 
• Prioritisation of projects based on their impact on sustainability and the environment among applications with equal quality assessment 

We expect to publish a list of applications that will receive funding in December 2025. 

See also: How we process applications.