The £17m UNITE consortium aimed at ‘building a borderless European digital health innovation ecosystem’ will be launching its first call this month with Scotland taking a leading international role

Earlier this year, Scotland was named sole UK collaborator on the major pan-European programme aimed at transforming healthcare through improved digital innovation by “cascading funding to highly innovative European companies”.

Formal NHS Scotland partner InnoScot Health is represented on two working groups, supporting Scottish Enterprise by providing knowledge and expertise on commercialising health service ideas, as well as the ability to connect with NHS innovators and the wider Scottish healthcare landscape.

Co-funded by the EU, UNITE is bringing together a diverse group of partners to collaborate on the development of new solutions, as well as bridge innovation gaps, enhance Europe's global competitiveness, and improve equity of access to healthcare.

UNITE’s first innovation call will go live on Wednesday 15 October with two themes:

• Digital innovations advancing more personalised and human-centric remote care
• Advancing European health data space

Open for three months, the primary aim of the call is to kickstart Joint Innovation Projects (JIP) which “focus on creating or reinforcing interregional value chains and support collaboration between companies, end users, and researchers to develop an innovation in digital health”.

Head of Innovation Commercialisation at InnoScot Health, Gillian Henderson said: “The plan is to bring together organisations from three different UNITE regions — one solution provider, one research entity, and end users — with over £850,000 in funding available.

“It’s an exciting time for all involved with lots of related initiatives now commencing in earnest. As a nation, we face many pressing healthcare challenges but UNITE is ready and able to foster breakthrough solutions through a highly collaborative approach.

“We believe that Scotland stands to benefit greatly, and we look forward to playing a meaningful role in helping to embed fresh, forward-thinking innovation across NHS Scotland in response to challenges such as ageing populations and healthcare workforce shortages.”

‘Agile Pilots’ of selected startups will also be going live in December with over £40,000 available for four pilots — two in Scotland and two in other UNITE regions — representing an opportunity for testing/market validation of digital health solutions.

UNITE Ecosystem Working Groups have been set up with InnoScot Health participating in two of five multinational groups — ‘Ecosystem Services for Start Ups & Scale Ups’ and ‘Experimentation methods, Test beds, Living Labs, Regulatory Sandboxes’.

The groups’ key goal is to deliver a series of online courses and events in 2026.

As part of the UNITE activities, a free digital health matchmaking event will be taking place on Monday 27 October at Scottish Enterprise’s Collaboration Space in Glasgow with InnoScot Health in attendance.

The in-person event will connect Scottish stakeholders with SMEs working in digital health to encourage knowledge exchange and collaboration.

InnoScot Health believes it represents a valuable opportunity to find and network with relevant partners in addition to signing up to UNITE’s B2 Match service, also open to those unable to attend in person.

The digital matchmaking platform is being used to help find collaborators across UNITE’s European network. InnoScot Health believes it represents a valuable opportunity to identify, connect, and network with relevant partners in other UNITE member regions.

• To stay connected with any project updates you can keep up to date via the UNITE website or LinkedIn Page