The G-BA Innovation Fund becomes permanent in Germany

On March 26, 2024, the “Digital Law – DigiG” (Law to accelerate the digitalization of the healthcare system) came into force, leading a line of changes concerning the G-BA Innovation Fund: the Fund becomes permanent and also the funding procedure for the projects dedicated to the new forms of care changes.

The overview of the introduced changes is provided below:

• The Innovation Fund becomes permanent with an annual funding amount of 200 million euros from 2025;
• In the area of new forms of care, the two-stage funding procedure is supplemented by a single-stage one for short-term or long-term projects:
  • The projects that pilot more comprehensive care approaches or are aimed to demonstrate patient-relevant structural or procedural improvements are relevant for the so-called single-stage, short-term funding procedure (project duration up to 24 months);
  • The so-called single-stage, long-term funding procedure (project duration up to 48 months) is relevant for the projects for which a full application has already been developed or the project approach has been successfully piloted;
  • The details of the individual procedures can be found in the respective funding announcement, published on the website of the Innovation Committee on March 22, 2024;
  • The funding applications for single-stage procedure can now be submitted to the Innovation Committee at any time after the funding announcement has been published - the Innovation Committee is to allocate 20 million euros annually for such projects;
• The current two-stage funding procedure for new forms of care remains in place. With a long term of a maximum of 48 months, it is aimed particularly at applicants who are planning to carry out large and complex projects that require increased effort or preparation. The Innovation Committee selects promising approaches from the initially submitted idea sketches to develop a full proposal;
  • The previous legal restrictions that, as a rule, no more than 20 projects may be funded in the second stage and that a maximum of 20% of the annual funding amount may be used for open-topic funding announcements are no longer applicable;
• How the Innovation Committee recommendations for transferring successful care approaches into standard care are dealt with should become more understandable:
  • The institutions and organizations addressed in the Innovation Committee decisions are now obliged to report within one year on implementing the submitted results. All feedback will continue to be published on the Innovation Committee website with the respective decision.

The full details in German can be found here (G-BA) and here (Digital Law).

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