HealthBridge_CE

HealthBridge_CE is our new international project financed through the Interreg CENTRAL EUROPE programme. It builds directly on DIGIVITALITY and takes the next step: making evidence about digital health solutions travel across borders.

A digital health tool accepted in one central European country often has to prove its value all over again in the next. This delays promising solutions and keeps them from patients.

HealthBridge_CE creates a shared way for hospitals, innovators and public authorities to test digital health solutions and produce evidence that different health systems can trust. Three cross-border twin nodes pair a country with an advanced health technology assessment system with one that is still developing its ow - so that experienced regions help others strengthen their procedures and turn successful pilots more quickly into publicly funded healthcare.

Objectives

The project develops the Integrated Living-Lab Operation Protocol (ILLOP) — a practical manual for running health technology assessment-preparatory pilots, covering procedures, governance and data standards.

Six start-ups will test their solutions in real hospital settings across three cross-border pilot nodes: Czechia–Germany, Slovakia–Austria and Czechia–Poland. The evidence they generate goes directly to payers and health technology assessment bodies through Policy Learning Labs and cross-border HTA Dialogue Forums.

The project will deliver national policy adoption roadmaps for Czechia, Slovakia and Poland, and a joint transnational strategy opening a path towards mutual recognition of early-stage evidence.

Building on DIGIVITALITY

HealthBridge_CE capitalises on four earlier Interreg projects, DIGIVITALITY among them. In DIGIVITALITY, SAPIE led the work on public financing of digital health solutions and co-authored the Digital Health Innovation Playbook.

Where DIGIVITALITY asked how each country could build its own reimbursement pathway, HealthBridge_CE asks what it takes for evidence produced in one country to be accepted in another.

READ ABOUT DIGIVITALITY

Role of SAPIE

SAPIE leads Work Package 3, Twin Pilots Implementation — responsible for the quality and delivery of the pilots across all three cross-border nodes.

In the Slovak–Austrian node we act as the innovation partner alongside the Geriatric Health Centres of the City of Graz. We will run the open call for start-ups, support them through a four-month incubation and package the results into evidence that payers can use.

SAPIE also prepares Slovakia's policy adoption roadmap and contributes to the joint transnational strategy. Our associated partner is the Association of Health Insurance Companies of the Slovak Republic.