EuroELSO Grants for Research and Education

1. Purpose and Scope

The EuroELSO Grant Programme enables healthcare professionals and scientists to undertake research or develop educational content in line with the wider objectives of EuroELSO. Specifically, these objectives are to advance and promote the relief of critical illness across Europe through:

  • the development and evaluation of novel therapies for the support of patients with severe respiratory or cardiac failure using extracorporeal support
  • maintaining a registry of such novel therapies
  • using the registry data to support clinical research
  • providing education programs for medical professionals and lay communities on these novel therapies including organizing a scientific symposium each calendar year.

It is anticipated that calls for applications will occur once each year.  The maximum value of the grants will be indicated in the specific call. These grants may support a project that can be completed within the budget or facilitate the creation of preliminary data and pump-prime grant applications to other awarding bodies.

2. Period of support:

The project should be performed during a maximum 18-month period and launched within 12 months after receiving the grant.

3. Financial provision

Grants can support salary costs, equipment, software, consumables, locally paid taxes and any other items that reasonably support the goals of the Grant. EuroELSO will not accept liability for additional monies that become due that are not outlined in the application.

For a successful application,

  • 50% of the grant will be paid as the project starts at the host institution. For research projects that require ethical and regulatory approvals, then the project will not be considered to have started until these approvals are in The host institution must invoice EuroELSO Associates for the amount within six months of the date of the award letter unless specific arrangements have been made for an extension of this period.
  • 40% of the grant will be paid as half of the project (e.g. recruitment, number of inclusions) has been completed. The completion of at least 50% of the objectives of the study will be assessed by the EuroELSO steering committee based on the biannual reports received by the applicant.
  • 10% of the grant will be paid at the end following receipt of the Final Report and the approval of the Steering committee of EuroELSO.

4. Eligibility

Applications will be accepted from any healthcare professional (including physicians, nurses, perfusionists, and therapists) or a research scientist. The host institution should be a hospital or university. The host institution should be an active ESLO centre in the European chapter (EuroELSO) or be affiliated with one.

5. Application process

Announcement:

Specific calls for applications will be made on the EuroELSO website, EuroELSO social media accounts, and via email. The Steering Committee may define a theme for some calls but this must be consistent with the objectives of EuroELSO. Calls will provide opportunities for applicants who have adult practices, paediatric practices, or basic science research.

Application:

Applicants should complete the application form that covers the following aspects of the proposal:

  • Project title
  • Lay summary of project (that will be published for successful grants on the EuroELSO website)
  • Lead applicant and their qualifications
  • Host institution
  • Affiliated ECMO centre (if not the host institution)
  • Co-applicant(s)

Proposal:

  • Healthcare/Educational need
  • Background
  • Specific questions or aims of the project
  • Detailed project plan
  • Expected value of results

Resources request

A complete application should be emailed by 17:00 Universal Standard Time on the advertised closing date to the email address indicated in the call for applications. No late applications will be accepted. Applicants are advised to submit their applications early to allow time to circumvent any technological issues during submission.

The signature page indicating approval of the EuroELSO centre’s director, departmental director of the host institution, and the host institution’s finance officer must be received within fourteen calendar days of the closing date.

Evaluation of applications

Applications will be assessed by a board of members of the Steering and Scientific committees. These members may choose to invite others with specific expertise (e.g. biostatistician) to help assess an application.

A specific evaluation panel will be convened within 2 months of the closing date for applications. Typically, this will be chaired by the Honorary Chairman of EuroELSO Associates or a nominee from the Steering Committee. The evaluation panel will be quorate if it contains at least three members of the steering committee and three members of the scientific committee. The panel may meet virtually.

All members of the evaluation panel will be required to declare any conflicts of interest (financial and intellectual) and previous associations with applicants before assessment. The chair of the evaluation panel will decide whether assessors should recuse themselves from the assessment of applications. Any conflicts which are unable to be resolved will be referred to the EuroELSO Steering Committee for final decision.

Each application will be assessed by at least three people. The specific criteria that will be assessed are outlined in the table below. Assessors will be asked to score each on a scale of 1 to 10 and provide a narrative to support their assessment. A mean of these scores will be presented to the evaluation panel. The evaluation committee will moderate these grades paying particular attention to cases where there is a divergence of the assessment.

The decision of the evaluation panel will be final and not subject to appeal.

Assessment criteria:                                                                                               

Host institution – affiliation to EuroELSO centre  Yes/No

Lead applicant – potential or proven track record to deliver project successfully. Previous EuroELSO funds received by the applicant or her/his research unit with details on completion of the project, publication, or presentation in Euro ELSO meetings.                                                       

Research project –  healthcare need and rationale, originality and overlap with existing/ongoing research project plan and experimental design, appropriate statistical analysis – will study answer the question? Expected value of the results.

Educational project – educational need, originality and overlap with existing/ongoing projects, project plan, likelihood of project being completed expected beneficiaries of educational project.

Resources requested – sufficient resource requested to complete project?,  Resources requested justifiable?

Award letter:

An award letter will be sent to successful applicants and feedback about the assessment sent to unsuccessful applicants within 10 calendar days of the evaluation panel. The award letter may indicate other requirements as defined by the evaluation panel. Successful applicants will be required to accept the Terms and Conditions of the Grant.

6. Responsibilities of the grant recipient toward EuroELSO

  • Grant recipients are required to submit a biannual report to ensure that the applicant is on track with the planned timeline. This is necessary to receive the second part of the budget.
  • A final report or scientific publication at the end of the project period (18 months) on the work undertaken is necessary to receive the last 10% of the grant.
  • The successful candidate will commit to submitting an abstract to the EuroELSO Annual Congress within 2 years after receiving the grant. A failure to present an abstract within 2 years could penalize future applications from the candidate’s research team.
  • EuroELSO expects to be acknowledged in any publication pertaining to the work carried out during the tenure of a Grant. Published papers will mention the EuroELSO research grant acknowledgment and “on behalf of EuroELSO” in the title or the authors.
  • One off-print of each manuscript should be provided to the EuroELSO Steering Committee before submission for publication.

7. Proposals involving human subjects

Research Ethical Committee approval will be required for research that includes human subjects, and appropriate evidence of such approval should be shared with EuroELSO. EuroELSO expects all work to be undertaken by the highest ethical standard and medical research codes of conduct.

8. Proposals involving animal use

Any applications that propose the use of animals should justify this with a compelling scientific case that explains why there is no realistic alternative. Specific considerations should include:

  • Using the simplest possible, or least sentient species of animal appropriate
  • Ensuring that distress and pain are avoided wherever
  • Employing an experimental design that minimizes the number of animals whilst ensuring that the scientific objectives will be met. The NC3Rs has developed a free online tool to guide researchers through the design of their experiments. Applicants should provide detailed descriptions of the experimental design.
  • Ensuring that best practices in relation to animal husbandry and welfare are
  • Ethical approval for animal study

All applicants are referred to the NC3Rs ‘Responsibility in the use of animals in bioscience research’ document that outline EuroELSO’s expectations.

Send your application to euroelso@interplan.de

ECPR Prague School 18-20 October 2023, Prague/Czech Republic

The 2nd edition of Prague ECPR School is around the corner. Be invited again as last year participants, members of ECPR WG or just ECPR fans.


We will again discuss all aspects of ECPR, a rich programme including variety of workshops has been prepared. As you are well aware, the role of VA-ECMO after release of ECLS Shock has been seriously challenged, therefore, even more, we have to discuss cutting edge research in ECPR. As announced earlier, a large registry related to planned multicenter RCT will be released and all european ECPR centers are kindly welcome. Several session are still under construction, your eventual input is kindly welcome. 

Check out our website https://www.ecprprague.com/ for further details.

Looking forward to see you and your team colleagues in Prague. We have kept all registrations fees same as the last year keeping this event as low cost as possible. As well EuroELSO is supporting ECPR school gratefully again.

Register for the Prague ECPR School, come over to Prague and support our effort to improve outcome in refractory cardiac arrest!

Yours cordially,

Jan Belohlavek, Demetris Yannopoulos, Marcel Van De Poll