Pre-commercial procurement (PCP) actions target consortia of procurers with similar needs that want to procure together the development of innovative solutions for greening the health and care systems. This topic does not provide direct funding to developers, industry or research organisations to perform R&D. They will be able to respond to the call for tenders launched by consortia of procurers funded under this call. Specific guidance on PCP actions and minimum eligibility requirements can be found in General Annexes H of the Horizon Europe work programme.

As every step in health and care delivery has a role in reducing its environmental footprint, the topic can support any of the different dimensions and needs for the greening of the healthcare sector.

Proposals should target either:

• Direct and indirect footprint deriving from the provision and/or delivery of care (excluding infrastructural elements related to building, transport logistics and food footprints).
• Circularity, waste production and treatment.
• Footprint from the chain of suppliers in making and delivering products, or services.
• More efficient use of resources, decreasing the overall sector footprint while addressing the constantly increasing demand for healthcare.

Focus should be on solutions that are specific to the healthcare sector therefore proposals targeting general infrastructure (energy efficiency of buildings such cooling, heating and ventilation, vehicles, construction or refurbishment), energy supply or food and catering services do not fall within scope. Within this topic, it is possible to foresee the transfer and adaptation of solutions and/or interventions from other sectors to health and care systems. It is open both to proposals requiring improvements mainly based on one specific solution/technology field, as well as to proposals requiring end-to-end solutions that need combinations of different types of innovation.

Continuous dialogue between demand and supply side is required for the success of PCPs, therefore the effective involvement of end users (e.g. clinical teams, patients or hospital structures etc) needs to be considered in the proposal. Furthermore, to stimulate dialogue with the supply side, procurers are required to organise an open market consultation before launching the procurement and to promote the call for tenders widely across Europe to potentially interested suppliers.

Involvement of procurement decision makers is needed to ensure that end solution(s) are adopted by health and care systems increasing the societal impact of the related research activities.