In July 2014, one of the main novelty resulting from the adoption of the updated 2014-2015 Horizon 2020 Work Programme has been the introduction of a new instrument: the Innovation Prizes.
The Prizes, also known as Inducement prizes, will financially award five research innovative projects, able to reach a specific goal of crucial societal interest for European citizens.

Inducement Prizes have proved a successful tool for stimulating and drive innovation in specific areas of research, and have proved to do so in an effective but flexible way.
In fact, prizes offers an incentive for new researchers or companies to work on a particular topic, stimulating innovation, developing breakthrough solutions and bringing in additional investment.

The Prizes, worth €6 million in 2015, cover three different thematic areas of research: health, environment, and ICT.

The European Commission has identified the following five specific challenges, for which the awards have been set up:

Better use of antibiotics Prize

The contest will open in February 2015 and runs until the end of 2016, rewarding €1 million.

This Prize will reward a rapid test that can identify to the point of care patients with upper respiratory tract infections that can be managed safely without antibiotics.
The primary objectives are, amongst others, the reduction of unnecessary use of antibiotics; the reduction of costs and side effects linked to the use of antibiotics; the decreasing of the emergence of antibiotic resistant organisms.

Food scanner Prize

The contest opens at the beginning of 2015 and runs until the end of 2016, rewarding €1 million.

The objective is to encourage citizens to adopt a more active lifestyle and improve their health by better monitoring food intake. The expected result is an eHealth solution that enables citizens to assess their food intake and provide optimal recommendations to improve their well-being.

Clean air Prize

The contest opens in the first quarter of 2015 and runs until the end of 2018, rewarding €3 million.

The objective of the prize is to reduce particulate matter air pollution in urban areas through the development of innovative material solutions, in order to counteract on particulate matter adverse effects on human health and ecosystems.

Collaborative spectrum sharing Prize

The contest opens in the second half of 2015 and runs until 2016, awarding €0.5 million.

The objective is to develop solutions for improving the usage of scarce spectrum resources, thus unlocking the capacity crunch of wireless networks faced with booming traffic and usages.

Breaking the optical transmission barriers Prize

The contest opens in the second half of 2015 and runs until 2016, awarding €0.5 million.

The prize should reward radical breakthrough solutions in the field of optical fibre transmission, which will be implemented into our future optical fibre networks.

In view of the opening of the competition for the award of Horizon 2020 Prizes, the European Commission has recently launched a dedicated website containing all pertaining information and insights: http://ec.europa.eu/research/horizonprize/index.cfm