QUALIREHAB launches as an EU-funded European project

January 2025 marked a major milestone for the QUALIREHAB program: the official launch of its new phase as a co-funded European research and implementation project, supported by the EU Transforming Health and Care Systems (THCS) Partnership under Horizon Europe, Grant Agreement No. 101095654.

The THCS Partnership pools European, national and regional scientific resources to address common challenges faced by health and care systems across Europe and beyond, aiming to create new knowledge and evidence while co-designing new solutions and supporting their transfer and scale-up across countries and regions.

For QUALIREHAB, this funding represents a transformational step. What began as a French national clinical trial, enrolling 142 patients across nine cardiac rehabilitation centers between 2018 and 2023, has now become an eight-partner international consortium spanning France, Belgium, Spain and Switzerland, with a collaborating center at Children's National Hospital in Washington, DC, USA.

The new project has a total budget of €3,926,999 and runs from January 2025 to December 2027. Its ambition goes well beyond replicating what worked in France: for the first time, the QUALIREHAB hybrid rehabilitation model is being adapted for delivery in primary care settings, a critical step toward making pediatric rehabilitation accessible not just in specialist hospital centers, but in communities, close to where children and families actually live.

The eight partner institutions bring together expertise in pediatric cardiology, neuropsychology, digital health, exercise physiology, primary care and patient engagement. Spanish partners, IIS La Fe Valencia, IIS Biogipuzkoa Donostia, and SERMAS-FIIBAP Madrid, are co-funded by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII), reflecting the strong Spanish investment in this program.

The launch of this new phase is the culmination of nearly a decade of work, and the beginning of something much bigger.