Intro - EU4Health (EU4H)

EU4Health is the EU's health programme designed to strengthen healthcare systems, improve preparedness for cross-border health threats, and promote innovation to tackle major health challenges. It funds initiatives that improve disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment, while fostering equity, sustainability, and trust in healthcare innovation across Member States.

Call Summary - EU4H.2026: A European flagship initiative leveraging AI and health data for cardiovascular health and related non-communicable diseases

Objective
The call aims to build a European model of AI-enabled care for cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) and related non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as diabetes and obesity. It focuses on two complementary objectives:

1. Leveraging health data: Structuring, federating, and enabling secure, high-quality, interoperable health data to support AI development and use in line with the European Health Data Space (EHDS).

2. Deploying AI solutions: Validating and scaling up mature AI applications for risk prediction, early detection, prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation of cardiovascular and related chronic diseases.

Scope
The initiative will accelerate the adoption of AI and health data for early detection, personalised prevention, integrated management, and rehabilitation of CVDs and related NCDs, including rare and complex forms.

Expected Impact

• Improved health outcomes: Earlier diagnosis, more precise prevention, reduced disease progression and avoidable mortality.

• Greater equity: Wider access to personalised, AI-supported care in underserved regions.

• Efficiency & sustainability: Reduced healthcare burden through predictive and preventive approaches.

• Trust in AI: Compliance with EU standards (AI Act, EHDS Regulation) on safety, transparency, interoperability, and governance.

Expected Outcomes

Data Dimension

• Large-scale, federated, high-quality, interoperable datasets on cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, aligned with EHDS.

• Defined technical specifications for datasets (phenotypes, genetic/biometric markers, metadata quality).

AI Adoption Dimension

• Validated AI solutions: Tools tested in real-world clinical settings for risk prediction, detection, and personalised prevention.

• Deployment frameworks: Guidelines for governance, interoperability, clinician training, patient engagement, and monitoring.

• Strategic guidance: Roadmap and blueprint for large-scale adoption of AI in healthcare systems.

• Robust evidence base: Comparative data on safety, performance, cost-effectiveness, usability, and acceptability for clinical and policy use.

Eligibility Criteria

• Eligible applicants:

  • Legal entities established in one of the EU Member States, including overseas countries and territories (OCTs).

  • Entities from third countries associated to EU4Health are also eligible.

• Consortium requirements:

• Proposals must be submitted by a consortium of at least three applicants (beneficiaries, not affiliated entities).

• These applicants must be independent from each other and established in different eligible countries.

• Types of entities: Public authorities, public or private bodies, research institutions, health providers, NGOs, and international organisations may participate, provided they have legal personality.

Other Requirements

• Exclusion criteria: Applicants must not be in a situation of exclusion (e.g. bankruptcy, professional misconduct, fraud, corruption, conflict of interest).

• Financial capacity: Non-public applicants must demonstrate financial capacity to carry out the project, unless specifically exempted.

• Operational capacity: Applicants must demonstrate necessary expertise, qualifications, and resources.

• Language: Proposals must be submitted in one of the official EU languages (English recommended).

• Submission: Through the EU Funding & Tenders Portal, using the standard templates provided.

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