New policy brief: Overcoming the barriers to a digital and green European health union

We are thrilled to share the final publication of our deliverable, "Health2Innovation: Bridging the gap – Overcoming structural barriers to a digital and green European Union."

This comprehensive policy brief is the culmination of extensive cross-border collaboration designed to future-proof Europe’s healthcare workforce. To ensure these vital insights achieve maximum impact across the EU, the final policy brief has been made available in 9 additional languages alongside the original English version, namely French, German, Greek, Lithuanian, Romanian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish.

[Link to ‘Download English version here]

Why this matters: The triple transition

The European healthcare sector is at a critical crossroads. The urgent need to transition toward a digitally enabled, green, and entrepreneurial ecosystem is currently hitting a wall of deep-rooted, interconnected structural bottlenecks.

This brief synthesises the direct outcomes of 10 national multistakeholder roundtables conducted across Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, and Sweden. It brings together the collective expertise of over 200 experts spanning higher education, vocational education and training (VET), industry, policy, and healthcare provision.

Core challenges identified

While regional healthcare contexts across the Member States vary, the roundtables revealed that local innovation is consistently blocked by the same systemic frictions:

• Regulation and bureaucracy: The complexity and prohibitive certification costs of the Medical Device Regulation (MDR) stifle small startup teams, while varying national interpretations of data protection create a "regulatory patchwork."

• The skills mismatch: Rigid national accreditation systems result in graduates who are theoretically qualified but practically under-prepared for the digital, green, and interdisciplinary demands of modern medicine.

• The funding "Valley of Death": High-potential healthcare solutions successfully complete early pilots but collapse at intermediate development stages (TRL 5-6) due to a lack of long-term financial incentives and value-based procurement.

• Fragmented digital infrastructure: A lack of system interoperability (especially with Electronic Health Records) frequently forces healthcare workers to deal with detached systems, increasing administrative burdens rather than efficiency.

Roadmaps for Action

To move from "innovative paralysis" to scalable systemic excellence, the brief details six urgent, actionable recommendations for EU and national policymakers:

1. Redesign health education: Make the integration of EU EntreComp, DigComp, and GreenComp frameworks a binding curricular requirement.

2. Strengthen education-industry partnerships: Create permanent cooperation models between universities, VETs, hospitals, and health-tech SMEs for co-designed internships and training modules.

3. Support regulatory harmonisation: Lower entry barriers by launching an EU-level voucher system to subsidize MDR certification costs for research spin-offs.

4. Prioritise digital interoperability: Require interoperability-by-design aligned with the European Health Data Space (EHDS) frameworks.

5. Close the "Valley of Death": Target specific financial instruments at high-risk validation stages and reward long-term lifecycle value in procurement.

6. Cultivate an innovation culture: Institutionalise sustainability into everyday clinical functions and provide healthcare professionals with "protected innovation time" for upskilling.

Download the Brief

The cost of inaction is too high—failing to change these structures will continue to drive European talent to more agile markets. Read the full breakdown of our findings and policy actions in your preferred language.

📥 [Download the Policy Brief in English and 9 Additional Languages Here]