The European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency has announced three winners following an open call for innovative projects looking to make health data “usable, interoperable, and clinically meaningful across fragmented systems”.
The Regional Innovation Valley project UNITE is funded by the EU to further European digital health innovation and collaboration. Its first open call, centred on sharing health data and personalising remote care, reportedly prompted engagement from more than 1,000 organisations, and received a total of 19 proposals across universities, startups, hospitals, and healthcare providers.
Three projects were ultimately selected for funding, and will enter an implementation phase in Spring 2026. These include CARDIO-HUB, which focuses on heart failure and using real-world data alongside remote monitoring to improve care for elderly patients. NEODATA+ looks to unlock “highly sensitive” datasets to allow for earlier and more accurate clinical decisions in neonatal intensive care; and RAD-TRACK EU, which tackles the challenges of radiation exposure in medical imaging by implementing a system enabling patient data to follow individuals between providers.
In total, the three selected projects will benefit from funding of €3,788,000. “Collectively, these projects signal a shift from pilot experiments to full-scale deployment,” EISMEA states. “While Europe has produced numerous digital health pilots, scaling them across borders has remained challenging due to strict regulatory frameworks and fragmented infrastructures.”
Wider trend: Health data
The newly-created Central East ICB, formed from Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes ICB, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ICB, and Hertfordshire, has revealed its five-year approach from strategy to delivery, highlighting the role of digital and data in achieving objectives and improving outcomes for the local population. The ICB makes a number of commitments around data, stating “high quality, timely data will be non-negotiable”. Over the next three years, the system’s data approach will look to build a single, shared foundation to support better decision-making, with the aim of having a unified view of data to help understand need, target interventions, and track outcomes.
The Australian Federal Budget for 2026 has been published, with headline commitments to advance interoperability, promote data sharing, and improve access to healthcare services. Among the measures to be outlined in the budget are plans to enhance the My Health Record with an injection of $598.3 million over two years, to ensure both patients and healthcare professionals are able to access reliable and “timely” health data. $79.2 million over three years is further set to go towards states and territories to support the implementation of national digital health reforms.
NHS England has published a best practice guide for NHS frailty pathways, intended to inform ICBs and providers on the actions that should be taken to commission and drive improvements in performance, ahead of the publication of the modern service framework for frailty and dementia later in 2026. NHSE turns to the use of a single frailty risk stratification dataset tool, recommending that frailty status should be recorded in EPR systems and shared between relevant health and care organisations, with oversight from neighbourhood MDTs. Population health management approaches will facilitate proactive case finding, support earlier recognition of frailty, and promote the targeting of services where they are needed most.
