Perspectives for environment and health research in Horizon 2020: dark ages or golden era?

Abstract The European Commission recently published the first calls for proposals for the Horizon 2020 (H2020) work programme for research and innovation. When browsing through the Health programme, it became apparent that the work programme made little reference to environmental health research. In this commentary we describe major milestones of environmental health research in previous European Framework Programmes and the policy shift that took place when preparing H2020. We introduce mobile health technologies as a niche innovation to reconcile the environmental health research arena with the H2020 programme that has a clear focus on ICT. The recent economic crises urged strong policy action to reinforce Europe's economic and innovation leadership. Market-driven and job-creating ambitions became primary goals of H2020. Environmental health-related keywords referring to, e.g. human biomonitoring, exposure assessment or exposome are absent in the current H2020-calls and this may suggest a lack of opportunities for environmental health researchers. Technologies related to mobile healthcare (mhealth) are rapidly maturing and offer new research and market opportunities. In a typically technology-pushed market, these sensor technologies however require validation by a third-party and implementation in large-scale public health monitoring studies. Also, issues related to data protection need further development to warrant user rights and privacy. If the European environmental health research arena succeeds in embracing these new mhealth sensor technologies, it may not only create an opportunity to play a role as a key innovation partner in health transition technologies, but it may also support authorities to realize a transition in our healthcare with a much bigger emphasis on a preventive and sustainable system.