Law360: The government must use the next phase of its pension review to address why so few workers take advice on their retirement options, the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) said on 4 April 2025.

The Innovative Health Initiative (IHI) has announced that the European Pharmacopoeia Commission has approved new rules for rabbit pyrogen tests (RPT), in force from 1 July 2025, due to the IHI VAC2VAC initiative. This initiative was launched with the goal of developing and validating non-animal testing approaches for both human and veterinary vaccines. RPTs, which were used to test for pyrogens in medicines and caused a fever, are no longer required and medicines developers will be able to select a suitable in vitro test (non-animal), such as the monocyte activation test, a cell-based assay for pyrogens, to test their products for pyrogens. These new rules save about 40,000 rabbits from being tested on every year.

The Innovative Health Initiative (IHI) has launched a two-stage call for proposals, under the 'call 8' umbrella, featuring topics on heart disease in cities, using big data to tackle osteoarthritis, the development of regulatory sandboxes, and the best ways to measure the impacts of a therapy on patients' lives. The short proposal submission deadline is 10 October 2024 at 5 pm Brussels time and the full proposal submission deadline is 23 April 2025 at 5 pm Brussels time.

The Innovative Health Initiative (IHI), a public-private partnership supported by the European Commission, has launched and supported a range of projects aimed at reducing the environmental impact of the health sector. These efforts form part of the EU’s broader objectives under the European Green Deal. Building on earlier initiatives under the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), the IHI has developed new projects addressing key environmental challenges, including medicines manufacture and single-use medical devices and their packaging.

The Innovative Health Initiative (IHI) has launched the SEARCH project in order to develop innovative synthetic data generation and sharing solutions for biomedical research. The project will create realistic synthetic replicas of healthcare data, including wearable device data, image sequences, and genomic data, to accelerate research in gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, and gynaecological diseases. By ensuring patient privacy, the initiative seeks to improve diagnostic accuracy, support decision-making, and revolutionise data sharing in healthcare.

The innovative health initiative (IHI) has launched a project, called SYNTHIA, which seeks to deliver validated, reliable tools and methods for synthetic data generation. Synthetic data is data that has been artificially generated to mimic real patient data. It could be useful in health research where a lack of real, high-quality datasets exist or to overcome concerns about patient privacy. However, there are concerns about the quality of the datasets and which synthetic data generation methods should be used when. The project will focus on six diseases and cover multiple data types, including lab results, clinical notes, genomics, imaging, and m-health data. It also aims to enable the generation of longitudinal data.

The innovative health initiative (IHI) has launched a project aiming to drastically cut animal use in standard safety studies. The virtual control study, VICT3R, will reduce the number of animals used by replacing actual control groups with ‘Virtual Control Groups’ (VCGs). Control groups account for around 25% of the animals used in drug and chemical safety studies, so replacing them with virtual animals in VCGs would have a significant impact on the numbers of animals actually used. It also aims to address the challenges faced in implementing VGCs and achieving regulatory acceptance of the VGC concept, by developing a database comprising high quality and standardised data from past toxicity studies and drawing on the statistics and AI to create workflows and computational tools to generate VGCs based on the data in the database. The validity, reproducibility and robustness of the VGCs will be assessed by comparing their performance with that of real control groups.

The European Commission has published a final evaluation of the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 (IMI2) programme, alongside a mid-term evaluation of the Innovative Health Initiative (IHI). The evaluations highlight that both programmes effectively drive innovation, improving patient care and quality of life. They acknowledge IMI as a pioneering public-private partnership and note that IHI, despite being new, is already contributing to key EU policies. The evaluations also emphasise substantial achievements in IMI2, including extensive networks formed through projects and ongoing collaborations that enhance the EU's health research landscape.

The Immigration (Health Charge) (Amendment) Order 2024, SI 2024/55 was signed into law (‘made’) on 16 January 2024. As such, in accordance with art 1(2) of the Order, it will come into force twenty one days after it was made, ie on 6 February 2024. The effect of the Order is that the Immigration Health Surcharge (IHS) will be increased from £470 to £776 per year for students, their dependents, applicants for the Youth Mobility Scheme and children under 18. In respect to all other applications liable to pay the Health Charge, the IHS will be increased from £624 to £1,035 per year. There are certain exemptions. Note that there is a transitional provision in the Order, art 4, which states that ‘In relation to an application for entry clearance or leave to remain made before the coming into force of this Order, the Principal Order applies without the amendments made by this Order’.

When looking at the definition of chargeable transfers and transfers of value in the Inheritance Tax Act 1984 (IHTA 1984), it is perhaps not immediately apparent that inheritance tax (IHT) is not only chargeable on individuals. The wording of the sections in IHTA 1984 refers to: • 'transfer of value which is made by an individual' • 'disposition made by a person' IHTA 1984, Pt IV introduces two deeming provisions into the legislation whereby, firstly, transfers of value made by a close company are attributed to the company’s participators and, secondly, alterations in the company’s share (or loan) capital or the rights attaching to them might also involve a disposition chargeable on participators. Practitioners should, therefore, be aware of this transfer of value pitfall when considering tax planning involving a close company. There have been a number of proposals and reforms over the last few years in respect of IHT. These proposals and reforms deal with various aspects, including the basis on which IHT is charged (see the All-Party

The broad aim of lifetime planning from an IHT perspective is to organise a person’s assets during lifetime in such a way as to minimise the future IHT charge on death. This may be achieved in a number of different ways, such as investing in tax-efficient assets and seeking to obtain and enhance IHT exemptions and reliefs. A major part of lifetime IHT planning is lifetime giving so as to reduce the value of the estate owned on death and this Practice Note concentrates on that aspect. Lifetime IHT planning can also involve making or reviewing a person’s Will. Where the planning involves a combination of lifetime gifts and structuring a Will, the two aspects should not be considered in isolation. It is essential to have regard to the terms of a Will if lifetime gifts are contemplated and vice versa. Even if a client does not pursue any lifetime giving, they should at least consider making a Will. Similarly, it is crucial to get the priorities right. Before embarking on any

Ever since the Inheritance Tax Act 1984 (IHTA 1984) came into force in 1985, the government has sought to limit the extent of what individuals can give away during their lifetime, whether by penalising reservation of a benefit from a gift or by increasing the tax burden on trusts created during lifetime. The modern regime for inheritance tax (IHT) on lifetime transfers is both complex and simple at the same time: simple because all attempts to give away your assets during your lifetime are potentially subject to some form of IHT depending on what you are trying to achieve; complex because of the many layers of rules and anti-avoidance measures that have been introduced over the years. Potentially exempt transfers (PETs) These are the most common form of gift and sometimes the most misunderstood. The legislation provides that any individual can give away their estate and it will be considered an exempt transfer if it is given to their spouse or a charity. If made to any other person or certain favoured