Digital Europe Health Calls 2026: €31.2M, Five Projects, 1 October

Three Digital Europe calls specifically targeting artificial intelligence in healthcare are open right now. Combined budget: €31.2 million. Deadline: 1 October 2026 at 17:00 Brussels time. Between them they will fund five projects. A competitive EU proposal takes two to three months to prepare, and these calls reward early preparation.

This article breaks down each call, explains who can apply, and outlines what a strong application looks like in the current funding environment.

Why This Funding Wave Matters

The European Commission’s decision to concentrate €31.2 million on healthcare AI in a single funding cycle is not accidental timing. It follows the WHO/Europe report published in April 2026, which found that 74% of EU countries report using AI in diagnostics. It follows the EU AI Act’s tightening provisions on systems used in healthcare settings. It follows the entry into force of the European Health Data Space regulation, which is creating both legal obligations and infrastructure needs across the continent.

The three topics open under the Digital Europe Programme’s 2025-2027 work programme, amended in March 2026, reflect three connected problems: the absence of validated AI tools for clinical screening at scale, insufficient AI literacy in clinical organisations, and fragmented data infrastructure that prevents health systems from sharing or reusing patient data effectively.

Each call has a different profile. Organisations should assess carefully which one, or which combination, fits their actual capabilities and partnerships before committing to an application.

Call 1: AI-Based Medical Imaging

Call ID: DIGITAL-2026-AI-PILOTING-10-SCREENING
Budget: €9 million
Focus: Pilot deployment and validation of AI tools for medical imaging in early disease screening

This call targets the deployment of AI-assisted diagnostic tools in screening programmes, primarily for cancer detection, cardiovascular disease, and similar conditions where early identification significantly changes patient outcomes.

The Commission is looking for validated AI imaging tools being piloted at clinical scale, with clear metrics on detection accuracy, clinician adoption, and impact on screening throughput. Organisations applying need to demonstrate an existing tool, clinical partners willing to deploy it in a real screening environment, and a measurement framework capturing both technical performance and clinical outcomes.

Eligible organisations include hospitals, research centres, AI companies, and national health agencies. This is a restricted call: participation is limited to entities established in EU member states, EEA countries and Switzerland, and entities under non-EU ownership or control face additional conditions under Article 12(6) of the Digital Europe Regulation. The typical consortium structure combines a technology provider (AI developer or medical imaging vendor), one or more clinical deployment sites (hospitals or screening centres), and a research or evaluation partner. Three to five organisations is standard; purely academic consortia score poorly on deployment criteria.

One point worth flagging: AI systems used in medical imaging typically qualify as medical devices under EU MDR/IVDR, and the Commission’s technical evaluators have been increasingly attentive to regulatory compliance roadmaps in health-related calls. Applicants should include a clear plan for MDR/IVDR conformity and, where the system also falls under the EU AI Act’s high-risk provisions, for AI Act compliance as well. Proposals that treat regulatory readiness as an afterthought face rejection.

Call 2: AI Skills for Healthcare Organisations

Call ID: DIGITAL-2026-SKILLS-10-DIGITAL-HEALTH-STEP
Budget: €7.8 million
Focus: Designing and delivering AI training programmes to increase AI readiness in healthcare organisations

This call receives the least attention of the three but may offer the most accessible entry point for organisations that do not have a technology product ready to deploy.

The objective is concrete: train clinicians, managers, and governance staff so that healthcare organisations can responsibly adopt and oversee AI tools. The Commission wants higher education institutions, hospitals, and industry partners to jointly design and deliver training programmes that address a specific documented gap. HealthTech Magazine’s 2026 survey found that 86% of clinical IT leaders cite insufficient training as a contributing factor to AI adoption failure. Call 2 is the funding instrument designed to close that gap.

Strong applications combine an educational design element (curriculum development, certification pathways) with a clinical deployment partner (a hospital or health authority that commits to putting participants through the programme) and an industry partner who brings context on how AI tools operate in practice.

Italian organisations should note that Agenas (National Agency for Regional Health Services) and regional health authorities are natural institutional partners for this type of call. A consortium that includes a northern Italian university, one or two regional health authorities, and a technology company has a solid structural foundation.

Call 3: European Health Data Space Deployment

Call ID: DIGITAL-2026-BESTUSE-10-EHDS
Budget: €14.4 million
Focus: Building capacity to deploy the European Electronic Health Record Exchange Format (EEHRxF) and digital health services under EHDS

This is the largest of the three calls and the most complex to prepare. It is also the one with the longest strategic tail.

The European Health Data Space regulation creates a legal framework for the sharing and reuse of health data across borders, for both primary use (patient care) and secondary use (research, policy). The EEHRxF is the technical standard that underpins this. DIGITAL-2026-BESTUSE-10-EHDS funds organisations to build the capacity to implement it.

In practice, this means projects that integrate EEHRxF into existing health IT infrastructure, demonstrate cross-border data exchange with at least one partner in another member state, or build services that support patients in exercising their EHDS rights (data access, consent management, data portability).

Health authorities, hospitals, regional digital health agencies, and health IT providers are the natural applicants. The cross-border requirement is central: EHDS is a European interoperability project, and proposals that operate entirely within a single country will face questions from evaluators about their contribution to the broader objective.

For Italian applicants, the ongoing alignment of the Fascicolo Sanitario Elettronico (FSE) with EHDS requirements provides a credible technical baseline. Organisations involved in FSE development or deployment (including regional health IT agencies and the companies serving them) have a foundation worth building a strong application around.

Building a Competitive Application

Four questions separate strong EU proposals from weaker ones, across all three calls.

Who is in the consortium, and why? Each partner needs a clear, non-duplicated role. Evaluators look for gaps in expertise and redundancies (two organisations doing the same thing). A hospital providing only its name adds no value and may raise questions about consortium design. Every organisation should contribute something the others cannot provide.

What problem are you solving, and for whom? EU calls attract many applications that describe activities when evaluators are looking for outcomes. A proposal that says “we will develop training modules” is weaker than one that says “we will reduce the time for clinical staff to achieve AI readiness competence from eighteen months to six, as measured by [specific assessment], at [named partner institution].” Specificity is evidence of credibility.

What will you measure, and how? Impact metrics should be defined before the project starts. The Commission’s evaluation criteria consistently reward proposals with clear KPIs, baseline measurements, and explicit methodologies for assessing whether the project achieved its stated goals.

What happens after the grant ends? Sustainability is a scored criterion in all three calls. Proposals that depend entirely on EU funding to continue operating score poorly. Identify the revenue model, institutional embedding, or policy mechanism that will keep the project’s outputs alive after the grant period closes.

Next Steps

The EU Funding and Tenders Portal (ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders) is the authoritative source for call documentation, eligibility rules, and submission guidance. All three topics are currently open. Two of them, the skills topic and the EHDS topic, are managed by the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA). The imaging screening topic is managed directly by the Commission, DG CNECT unit A.6 on Artificial Intelligence in Health and Life Sciences.

For Italian organisations, the National Contact Point (NCP) for Digital Europe provides free advisory services, assesses eligibility, and can facilitate introductions to potential partners in other member states.

For consortia building from scratch, the runway is short. For organisations that already have a partner network or an existing project that could be scaled, the timeline is manageable but tight.

The governance gap in European healthcare AI is documented. The funding to address parts of it is available. The question now is which organisations are prepared to move.

References

WHO Regional Office for Europe (April 2026). Artificial Intelligence in Health in the European Region. Copenhagen: WHO/Europe. Available at: euro.who.int
European Commission (2026). Digital Europe Programme Work Programme 2026. Brussels: European Commission. Available at: digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu
European Health and Digital Executive Agency — HaDEA (2026). Call documentation for DIGITAL-2026-AI-PILOTING-10-SCREENING, DIGITAL-2026-SKILLS-10-DIGITAL-HEALTH-STEP, DIGITAL-2026-BESTUSE-10-EHDS. Available at: hadea.ec.europa.eu
EU Funding and Tenders Portal. Open calls under Digital Europe Programme 2026. Available at: ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders
HealthTech Magazine (2026). State of Healthcare IT Integration Report 2026.

#EUFunding #DigitalEurope #HealthcareAI #EHDS #HealthInnovation #HaDEA

Updates

Verified 31 August 2026. This article was first published on 30 May 2026. A budget figure in the original headline and text was wrong and has been corrected in place. What follows records the current state of the three topics, one month before they close.

Correction: the combined budget is €31.2 million, not €63.2 million

The original version of this article, including its headline, put the combined budget of the three health topics at €63.2 million. That figure is wrong. The three topics sum to €31.2 million, as set out in the official call fiches and confirmed on the Funding and Tenders Portal. The per-topic figures given in the article were correct throughout; only the total was not. The headline has been changed accordingly.

What is actually on the table

Topic	Budget	Grants	Funding rate	Managed by
DIGITAL-2026-AI-PILOTING-10-SCREENING	€9,000,000	2	50%	DG CNECT A.6
DIGITAL-2026-SKILLS-10-DIGITAL-HEALTH-STEP	€7,800,000	2	50%, lump sum	HaDEA B.2
DIGITAL-2026-BESTUSE-10-EHDS	€14,400,000	1	100%	HaDEA B.2
Total	€31,200,000	5

The number that matters most is not the budget. It is the five in the grants column. Across three topics, the Commission expects to fund five projects in total, and only one on the European Health Data Space topic. That topic also carries a 100% funding rate, which the original article did not mention and which changes the calculation for any public body or regional health authority weighing whether to lead a consortium.

Status one month out

All three topics remain open for submission with the deadline unchanged at 1 October 2026, 17:00 Brussels time. No corrigendum has been issued and the call fiches are still at version 1.0. What has moved is the guidance: the imaging screening topic now has 27 published questions and answers, including those from the Info Day of 21 May 2026, covering scope, the definition of a medical centre, intellectual property obligations and non-EU ownership. The skills topic has 13, the EHDS topic 3. Anyone preparing a proposal should read them before writing.

A correction on the WHO figure

The article originally stated that the WHO Europe report of April 2026 documented that 74% of EU hospitals use AI in diagnostics. The report says 74% of EU countries report using AI in diagnostics. Countries, not hospitals. The claim that only four member states have a dedicated national strategy does not appear in the WHO press release and has not been confirmed against the full report; it has been removed from the text.

Sources for this update

Official call fiches on ec.europa.eu: call-fiche_digital-2026-ai-piloting-10_en.pdf (v1.0, 16 February 2026), call-fiche_digital-2026-skills-10_en.pdf and call-fiche_digital-2026-bestuse-10_en.pdf (both v1.0, 1 April 2026). Topic pages on the EU Funding and Tenders Portal, read 31 August 2026. HaDEA, new calls under the Digital Europe Programme, 10 April 2026. DG CNECT Info Day page for the screening topic, last updated 4 June 2026.

For how we approach EU research and innovation funding, including programme selection and the conditions that make engagement worth the effort, see the EU Research and Innovation Funding service page.

€31.2 Million, Five Projects: A Practical Guide to the EU Digital Europe Health Funding Calls (Deadline: 1 October 2026)