European Commission's FP7 Program to boost the life science R&D sees increased funding

Europe is moving towards becoming a knowledge-based economy. Keeping in line with this objective, the European Commission has instituted the Framework 7 (FP7) program. Introduced to support the re-launched Lisbon strategy, FP7 focuses on research themes rather than the framework programs of the past. It has been designed to meet some of the persisting challenges of raising Europe to match global excellence in research, thereby benefiting the European life science funding.

A new analysis from Frost & Sullivan - Life Sciences Funding ' 2008 - finds that the budget allocated in the FP6 was 2.51 billion euros ($3.35 billion) and it witnessed a tremendous increase of 143%, while the budget allocated for FP7 was 6.10 billion euros towards health from 2007 to 2013. The markets covered in this research service are Europe, the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

"The key to a knowledge-based economy lies in research, education, and innovation and this is what the European commission is targeting in order to reach the Lisbon goals," says Frost & Sullivan consultant Shabeer Hussain, adding: "The FP7 program has incorporated European technology platforms and joint technology initiatives along with developing regions of knowledge and risk-sharing finance facility to nurture private investment in research."