EU Funds of 6 Million EUR for IT Companies Creating Digital Health Solutions

Romanian technology firms can register online for a European programme offering funding for the development of digital solutions aimed at the healthcare sector, according to a press release issued on Thursday to the StartupCafe entrepreneurial community.

Start-ups, SMEs, and other interested teams can apply HERE, through the UNITE programme, until 10 December 2026 at 17:00 CET (18:00 Romanian time).

UNITE is a pan-European initiative with a total value of €20 million, aimed at building a European innovation ecosystem in digital health, free of barriers between regions.

Thursday saw the launch of the Second Call for Joint Interregional Projects, with a budget of €6 million to support European collaborations in the field of digital health.

The call is aimed at innovators who have already tested digital health technologies and wish to move on to the validation, deployment, and international scaling stage.

Focus areas

Funding is concentrated on two main directions:

• Deep-tech solutions for equal access to healthcare: projects addressing inequalities in access to medical services, service fragmentation, technological gaps, and the lack of personalised care, particularly for elderly people and disadvantaged groups.
• Digital innovations for the healthcare staffing crisis: technologies that help address the shortage of medical personnel, optimise clinical and administrative workflows, and support professional training.

Who can apply

Funding is available to organisations legally established in:

• Lombardy (Italy)
• Central Macedonia (Greece)
• Extremadura (Spain)
• Aragón (Spain)
• Scotland (United Kingdom)
• Wales (United Kingdom)
• Romania (at national level)

For applicants from Romania, the maximum funding is €250,000 per partner.

Eligible applicants include start-ups, SMEs, companies, research and innovation organisations, innovation clusters, hospitals, testbeds, living labs, and other entities active in the field of digital health.

Funding details

The UNITE Second Open Call will support up to 6 projects, with a maximum of €1 million per project and €600,000 per individual beneficiary, over a period of 18 months.

An online information session dedicated to this call is scheduled for 30 September 2026, between 14:00 and 15:30 CET (16:30 Romanian time). Registration is open.

Applications may be submitted until 10 December 2026 at 17:00 CET (18:00 Romanian time), and selected projects are expected to begin in April 2027.

Results of the first call

The new call follows the success of the first UNITE funding round, which attracted over 1,000 organisations. Of the 19 proposals submitted, 3 projects were selected and entered implementation in spring 2026:

• CARDIO-HUB – a remote monitoring system for elderly patients with heart failure.
• NEODATA+ – the use of sensitive data from neonatal intensive care to improve clinical decision-making.
• RAD-TRACK EU – a project addressing the fragmentation of radiation exposure data in medical imaging.

"The success of UNITE's First Open Call demonstrated what can happen when digital health innovators, researchers, and healthcare organisations connect across regional boundaries. Three ambitious interregional projects are now turning that collaboration into concrete solutions. The Second Open Call will build on this momentum and bring more promising innovations closer to real-world impact," said Dr Marina Samoylova, UNITE Programme Manager.

Those interested can follow upcoming matchmaking events and register on the UNITE Matchmaking Platform to find potential project partners.

UNITE is a five-year initiative co-funded by the European Union under the Regional Innovation Valleys programme, grant agreement no. 101161108. The project brings together regions and stakeholders from the public sector, industry, research, healthcare, and civil society, with the aim of supporting digital health innovators in testing, scaling, and implementing solutions related to personalised remote care, population ageing, medical staff shortages, and European Health Data Spaces.