Biomedical and health research: an analysis of country participation and research fields in the EU’s Horizon 2020

We analysed the Horizon 2020 project database, currently the European Union’s (EU) largest framework programme for research and innovation—nearly 80 billion euros available over 7 years (2014–2020), to estimate the amount and type of EU-supported biomedical and health research and funding distribution among EU member states and non-European countries. Out of 20,877 projects as of 14th January 2019, a total of 4865 projects were classified as human health related. Ninety-four countries/territories worldwide participated in at least one biomedical project. The EU-15 original member states showed the highest participation as project leaders/partners and for acquired funding. Strong unequal funding distribution and participation between EU-15 and the 13 newest members—with EU-15 receiving about 87% of funding and EU-13 only 3%—have been evidenced. For both EU-15 and EU-13 we detected about 20% of projects involving the public and private sectors, according to Horizon 2020 guidelines. The largest percentage of projects was in the areas of biotechnological research (28.28%) and “basic research” (26.95%); these two sectors together accounted for 46.99% of the total funding assigned (7.9 billion euros). Research in neurosciences and neurological diseases appeared to be an increasing study area. Neurological and mental diseases covered about 21% of projects. Epidemiological studies accounted for about 5% of the total projects and for 14% of funding. Strong correlations were shown by indicators of financial and scientific capacity to identify success rates in obtaining EU funding, making the gap between countries with strong and weak research infrastructures difficult to overcome. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s10654-020-00690-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.