The UNITE initiative, led by 28DIGITAL, has selected its first three joint interregional projects, marking a significant milestone in building a borderless European digital health ecosystem.
The first UNITE open call engaged over 1,000 organisations and received 19 proposals from across multiple European regions, bringing together startups, scaleups, universities, research centers, hospitals, and healthcare providers in interregional consortia. After a multi-stage evaluation, only three projects made the cut—highlighting both the intense competition and the drive for solutions that can scale beyond local pilots.
The proposals clustered around two areas: sharing health data across borders and delivering more personalised remote care. Both are central to Europe’s strategy for modernising healthcare systems under growing pressure from ageing populations and workforce shortages.
The selected projects — CARDIO-HUB, NEODATA+, and RAD-TRACK EU — will enter the implementation phase in spring 2026. Each tackles a different aspect of the same challenge: making health data usable, interoperable, and clinically meaningful across fragmented systems.
CARDIO-HUB focuses on heart failure, combining real-world data and remote monitoring to enhance care for elderly patients. NEODATA+ targets neonatal intensive care, aiming to unlock highly sensitive datasets to enable earlier and more accurate clinical decisions. RAD-TRACK EU addresses the widespread issue of radiation exposure in medical imaging by implementing a system that enables patient data to follow individuals across providers.
Collectively, these projects signal a shift from pilot experiments to full-scale deployment. While Europe has produced numerous digital health pilots, scaling them across borders has remained challenging due to strict regulatory frameworks and fragmented infrastructures.
This is precisely what UNITE aims to overcome.
Over four years, this €20 million pan-European programme, launched under the European Commission's Regional Innovation Valleys initiative, aims to bridge Europe’s digital health divide by funding interregional innovation projects, supporting local startups and SMEs, and enabling the deployment of deep-tech solutions across healthcare systems.
A central focus of the programme is making health data and digital health innovation scale across borders—by improving interoperability, aligning regional strategies, and streamlining procurement and adoption of solutions. Through open calls, training courses, and ecosystem-building activities, UNITE is designed to connect fragmented innovation landscapes and transform them into a coordinated European effort.
“Europe has the data and expertise in digital health innovation—UNITE brings them together to scale solutions across regions and deliver real impact for healthcare systems and patients”, said Dr. Marina Samoylova, Programme Manager of UNITE.
