Boosting innovation through exploitation of digitalisation and data exchange in healthcare

The Innovative Health Initiative (IHI) Call 12, Topic 04 represents a significant funding opportunity under the Horizon Europe program, focusing on "Boosting innovation through exploitation of digitalisation and data exchange in healthcare." This call, with a budget of €43.3 million, is structured as a single-stage application process, with submissions open from January 15, 2026, and closing on April 21, 2026.

Eligible applicants include a range of organizations such as universities, research institutions, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), larger companies, and patient organizations, forming collaborative public-private partnerships. The requirement is to create consortia that reflect diverse expertise to address complex healthcare challenges.

The funding mechanism involves grants within the framework of Horizon Action Grant Budget-Based, specifically for Research and Innovation Actions (RIA). Successful proposals will focus on pre-competitive research aimed at developing innovative digital health tools, methods, and technologies that can enhance healthcare delivery.

Major project objectives include the application of artificial intelligence, enhancement of health data management, and creation of integrated healthcare solutions. Expected outcomes focus on improving patient care, fostering technological leadership in Europe, and ensuring that innovations can be effectively translated into practice.

Co-funding is mandatory, requiring that at least 45% of eligible costs come from industry partners or other affiliated entities, thereby ensuring that the involvement of private sector contributions is substantial. Each project can receive between €8 million and €43.3 million depending on the scope and structure of the proposed initiative, with an expected total of up to five grants being awarded for this call.

The application process involves submitting a single, complete proposal electronically through the Funding and Tenders Portal. Evaluation will be based on scientific excellence and the collaborative potential of the consortium. This call encourages addressing significant public health needs and ensures that projects align with key EU policies, including the European Green Deal and initiatives related to cancer preparedness.

Overall, this opportunity is positioned to catalyze greater integration of digital technologies within the healthcare landscape, contributing to scalable and efficient solutions for disease management and improving health outcomes across Europe.

This EU funding opportunity is part of the Horizon Europe program, specifically the Innovative Health Initiative (IHI) Joint Undertaking (JU) Call 12. It focuses on "Boosting innovation through exploitation of digitalisation and data exchange in healthcare." The call is structured as a single-stage process, meaning there is only one submission deadline. The type of action is HORIZON-JU-RIA, which stands for HORIZON JU Research and Innovation Actions. The Model Grant Agreement (MGA) type is HORIZON Action Grant Budget-Based [HORIZON-AG].

The call opens for submission on January 15, 2026, and the deadline for submission is April 21, 2026, at 17:00:00 Brussels time.

The overall objective is to leverage digitalization and data exchange to drive innovation in healthcare.

Expected Impacts:

Proposals should define impacts contributing to:
Wider availability of interoperable, quality data, respecting FAIR principles (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable), facilitating research and development.
Improved insight into real-life patient behavior and challenges in chronic diseases and co-morbidities through m-health and e-health technologies.
Advanced analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) supporting health R&I, leading to:
Clinical decision support for increased diagnostic accuracy and treatment efficacy.
Shorter times to market for health innovations.
Wider availability of personalized health interventions.
Better evidence of the added value of new digital health and AI tools, including reduced bias through improved methodologies.

Funded actions should contribute to:
Strengthening the competitiveness of the EU’s health industry through increased economic activity in health technology development, particularly integrated health solutions, fostering European technological leadership and digital transformation.
Implementing the EU’s Life Sciences Strategy, unlocking new knowledge, data, and AI for breakthrough innovation.

Actions should also consider and contribute to EU programs, initiatives, and policies such as:
European Green Deal
Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan
EU Mission on Cancer
Apply AI Strategy
European Virtual Human Twins Initiative
1+ Million Genomes Initiative
Preparedness and response to health emergencies
Upcoming EU Biotech Act
Regulation on the European Health Data Space (EHDS)
EU Artificial Intelligence Act

Expected Outcomes:

Proposals must define outcomes contributing to digitalization and data exchange in healthcare, aligned with IHI JU’s Specific Objective 4, as outlined in the IHI JU Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA).
Funded projects must deliver results addressing public health needs and supporting the development of safe, people-centered, effective, cost-effective, and affordable health innovations.
Outcomes should benefit relevant stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem.
Expected outcomes may cover the entire spectrum of care (prevention to disease management) and may be centered around disease areas, key themes or approaches such as:
Prevention
Precision diagnostics
Personalised medicine
Chronic disease management
Enabling solutions for:
Digitalisation
Artificial intelligence (AI)
Regulatory science
Greener and more sustainable healthcare
Deployment and use of these solutions into practice

Scope:

The call aims to fund pre-competitive research and innovation for novel tools, methods, and technologies that will foster the development of health innovations for more efficient prevention, interception, diagnosis, treatment, management of diseases, and enabling recovery.
Applicants must form a collaborative public-private partnership consortium, reflecting the integrative and cross-sectoral nature of IHI JU. The consortium should address the challenges and scope of IHI JU Specific Objective 4, which is to exploit the full potential of digitalisation and data exchange in healthcare.

Proposal Considerations:
Address an unmet public health need based on:
High disease burden for patients and/or society.
High economic impact of the disease.
Transformational nature of potential results on innovation processes (e.g., health data analytics).
Demonstrate the ability to translate research into innovative solutions that can be integrated/implemented into the healthcare ecosystem and/or industrial processes.
Carry out a landscape analysis to avoid overlap with existing initiatives and identify potential synergies. Include a plan on how to synergize with identified initiatives.
Consider patient-centricity, using suitable health technologies and/or social innovations, taking demographic trends into account.
Perform at-scale activities considering the innovation cycles of the pharmaceutical and medical technology industries, driving concrete and transformational outcomes.
Welcome integrated pre-competitive activities, including demonstration pilots, that could accelerate and improve the discovery, development, and piloting of methods and strategies that facilitate the uptake of evidence-based practice and research outcomes into regular use.
Consider the potential regulatory impact of project outputs and develop a regulatory strategy and interaction plan for generating appropriate evidence and engaging with regulatory bodies.
Consideration should be given to the Health Data Access Bodies established under the European Health Data Space Regulation in the context of secondary use of data.
Applicants are strongly encouraged to provide open access to project-generated outputs such as standards, data sets, and other research results, and share evidence on their clinical utility and economic aspects.

General Conditions:

Admissibility Conditions:
Proposal page limit: 50 pages for RIA full proposals (single-stage call).
Eligible Countries:
Described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes.
Specific provisions for non-EU/non-Associated Countries may apply.
Other Eligible Conditions:
Described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes and in the "Conditions of the Calls for proposals and Calls management rules" section of the IHI JU Work Programme (WP).
Financial and Operational Capacity and Exclusion:
Described in Annex C of the Work Programme General Annexes.
Evaluation and Award:
Award criteria, scoring, and thresholds are described in Annex D of the Work Programme General Annexes and in the "Conditions of the Calls for proposals and Calls management rules" section of the IHI JU Work Programme (WP).
Submission and evaluation processes are described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes and the Online Manual.
Indicative timeline for evaluation and grant agreement is described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes.
Legal and Financial Set-Up of the Grants:
Described in Annex G of the Work Programme General Annexes.

Specific Conditions:

Specific conditions on Availability, Accessibility, and Affordability (3A) apply to this topic.
The JU reserves the right to object to transfer/exclusive licensing.

Application and Evaluation Forms and Model Grant Agreement (MGA):

Application Form Templates: Available in the Submission System.
Evaluation Form: IHI JU Evaluation form for Research and Innovation Actions.
Proposal Templates:
Part A: Generated by the IT system in the submission environment.
Part B: IHI JU Proposal template (RIA/FP) - Part B.
Proposal Annexes:
Annex to the budget and type of participants (Excel template).
Declaration of in-kind contribution commitment (Word template).
In-kind contributions to additional activities (IKAA) (Excel template).
Essential information for clinical studies.
Ethics (optional).
Contributing partners (compulsory for consortia involving contributing partners).
Model Grant Agreements (MGA): HE MGA.

Additional Documents:

Council Regulation (EU) 2021/2085 (Single Basic Act ‘SBA’).
IHI JU Work Programme (WP).
Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA).
IHI JU Guide for Applicants.
IHI JU FAQs.
Horizon Europe Reference Documents:
HE Main Work Programme 2026-2027 – General Annexes.
HE Programme Guide.
EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509.
Rules for Legal Entity Validation, LEAR Appointment and Financial Capacity Assessment.
EU Grants AGA — Annotated Model Grant Agreement.
Funding & Tenders Portal Online Manual.
Funding & Tenders Portal Terms and Conditions.
Funding & Tenders Portal Privacy Statement.

Budget Overview:

The total budget for this call is significant, with individual topics having their own budget allocations.
HORIZON-JU-IHI-2026-12-SINGLE-STAGE-01, HORIZON-JU-IHI-2026-12-SINGLE-STAGE-03, HORIZON-JU-IHI-2026-12-SINGLE-STAGE-02: 110,000,000 EUR, with contributions ranging from 8,000,000 to 60,000,000 EUR. Indicative number of grants: 324.
HORIZON-JU-IHI-2026-12-SINGLE-STAGE-04: 43,300,000 EUR, with contributions ranging from 8,000,000 to 43,300,000 EUR. Indicative number of grants: 5.
HORIZON-JU-IHI-2026-12-SINGLE-STAGE-05: 9,800,000 EUR, with contributions ranging from 5,000,000 to 9,800,000 EUR. Indicative number of grants: 2.

Partner Search:

There are partner search announcements available to help applicants find collaborators.

This funding opportunity aims to foster innovation in healthcare by promoting the use of digitalization and data exchange. It seeks to fund projects that develop new tools, methods, and technologies to improve the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and management of diseases. The EU is looking for collaborative projects that bring together public and private partners to address unmet public health needs and contribute to the competitiveness of the European health industry. The projects should align with EU strategies and policies, such as the European Green Deal and the EU’s Beating Cancer Plan, and should consider the ethical and regulatory aspects of health data and AI. The EU wants to see projects that have a clear plan for translating research into real-world applications and that are committed to making their results openly available.

Eligible Applicant Types: The opportunity requires a collaborative public-private partnership consortium. While not explicitly stated, eligible applicants would likely include: startup, SME, large enterprise, university, research institute, nonprofit, and potentially other entities that can form a consortium. The emphasis is on a cross-sectoral approach, suggesting a wide range of organizations could be eligible if they contribute to the project's objectives.

Funding Type: The primary funding mechanism is a grant, specifically a HORIZON Action Grant Budget-Based [HORIZON-AG]. The call is for HORIZON JU Research and Innovation Actions (HORIZON-JU-RIA).

Consortium Requirement: A consortium of multiple applicants is required. The text explicitly states that applicants "must assemble a collaborative public-private partnership consortium."

Beneficiary Scope (Geographic Eligibility): The geographic eligibility is described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes. The text mentions that "A number of non-EU/non-Associated Countries that are not automatically eligible for funding have made specific provisions for making funding available for their participants in Horizon Europe projects." This suggests that while the primary focus is on EU and associated countries, some third countries may also be eligible under specific conditions.

Target Sector: The program targets the health sector, with a focus on digitalisation and data exchange in healthcare. Specific areas include: health technologies, integrated health solutions, life sciences, prevention, precision diagnostics, personalised medicine, chronic disease management, artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare, regulatory science, and greener and more sustainable healthcare.

Mentioned Countries: The opportunity mentions "EU" and "non-EU/non-Associated Countries".

Project Stage: The projects should be at the stage of pre-competitive research and innovation, with a focus on developing novel tools, methods, and technologies. The program also welcomes integrated pre-competitive activities, including demonstration pilots, suggesting projects should be at least at the development and demonstration stages.

Funding Amount: The funding ranges vary depending on the specific topic within the call:
HORIZON-JU-IHI-2026-12-SINGLE-STAGE-01, -02, -03: €8,000,000 to €60,000,000
HORIZON-JU-IHI-2026-12-SINGLE-STAGE-04: €8,000,000 to €43,300,000
HORIZON-JU-IHI-2026-12-SINGLE-STAGE-05: €5,000,000 to €9,800,000

Application Type: The application type is an open call, specifically a "SINGLE-STAGE" call.

Nature of Support: Beneficiaries will receive money in the form of a grant.

Application Stages: The application process is a single-stage process.

Success Rates: The success rates are not explicitly mentioned.

Co-funding Requirement: The text mentions "In-kind contributions to additional activities (IKAA)" as a compulsory annex for certain proposals, suggesting that co-funding or in-kind contributions may be required, especially if the proposal includes IKAA.

Summary: This opportunity is a call for proposals under the Innovative Health Initiative (IHI) Joint Undertaking (JU), part of the Horizon Europe program. It aims to boost innovation in the health sector by funding research and innovation actions focused on digitalisation and data exchange in healthcare. The call is structured around several topics, each with a specific budget and expected number of grants. The overall budget for the call is substantial, with individual projects potentially receiving significant funding. The program emphasizes the importance of public-private partnerships and encourages applicants to form collaborative consortia that bring together diverse expertise and resources. The goal is to develop novel tools, methods, and technologies that can improve the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and management of diseases, while also strengthening the competitiveness of the EU's health industry and contributing to key EU policies and initiatives. Applicants must address unmet public health needs, demonstrate the ability to translate research into innovative solutions, and consider the regulatory impact of their projects. The call is open to a wide range of organizations from the EU and associated countries, as well as potentially some third countries, and the application process is a single-stage process with a deadline in April 2026.