The Innovative Medicines Initiative −10 Years of Public-Private Collaboration

The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) is a public-private partnership between the European Union and the European pharmaceutical industry. Born of the necessity to foster collaboration between different stakeholders in order to address growing challenges in bringing new medicines to market and the rapidly evolving healthcare landscape, IMI has successfully delivered the radical collaboration needed to address these challenges. In this article we reflect on some of the major achievements of the programme by highlighting a few of the key projects funded and the progress they have made, as well as some of the lessons learnt in delivering such an ambitious partnership. Those that drove the foundation of IMI recognized that to address these challenges required not just ambitious scientific approaches, but also an awareness of societal needs. Therefore, actors from beyond the traditional pharmaceutical research communities would be needed. One of the key successes of IMI has been to foster radical collaboration between diverse public and private partners of all types, including large pharmaceutical companies, SMEs, regulators, patient organizations and public research institutions. It has achieved this by being a neutral platform where all partners are bound by the same rights and responsibilities. Since it began there has been an evolution in the understanding of what is considered “pre-competitive,” resulting in IMI projects now addressing all of the steps within the pharmaceutical development value chain. With this expansion in the types of projects supported by IMI, different actors from beyond the traditional pharmaceutical research family have been attracted to participate, enriching further the collaboration at the heart of the programme. Finally, such a complex programme brings with it challenges, and we reflect on some of the important learnings that should be applied to future collaborative models to ensure that they are as successful as possible and deliver the expected impact.