The £17 million UNITE consortium, which aimed to build a borderless European digital health innovation ecosystem, launched its first call that month with Scotland taking a leading international role.
Earlier in the year, Scotland had been named the sole UK collaborator on the major pan-European programme designed to transform healthcare through improved digital innovation by “cascading funding to highly innovative European companies”.
Formal NHS Scotland partner InnoScot Health was represented on two working groups, supporting Scottish Enterprise by providing knowledge and expertise in commercialising health service ideas, as well as connecting with NHS innovators and the wider Scottish healthcare landscape.
Co-funded by the EU, UNITE brought together a diverse group of partners to collaborate on the development of new solutions, bridge innovation gaps, enhance Europe’s global competitiveness, and improve equity of access to healthcare.
UNITE’s first innovation call went live on Wednesday 15 October with two themes:
- Digital innovations advancing more personalised and human-centric remote care
- Advancing the European health data space
Open for three months, the primary aim of the call was to kickstart Joint Innovation Projects (JIPs) which “focused on creating or reinforcing interregional value chains and supporting collaboration between companies, end users, and researchers to develop innovations in digital health.”
Head of Innovation Commercialisation at InnoScot Health, Gillian Henderson, said: “The plan was 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 was an exciting time for all involved, with many related initiatives commencing in earnest. As a nation, we faced many pressing healthcare challenges, but UNITE was ready and able to foster breakthrough solutions through a highly collaborative approach.
“We believed that Scotland stood to benefit greatly, and we looked 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 start-ups were also set to go 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 and market validation of digital health solutions.
UNITE Ecosystem Working Groups were established, 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’ main objective was to deliver a series of online courses and events in 2026.
As part of the UNITE activities, a free digital health matchmaking event took place on Monday 27 October at Scottish Enterprise’s Collaboration Space in Glasgow, with InnoScot Health in attendance.
The in-person event connected Scottish stakeholders with SMEs working in digital health to encourage knowledge exchange and collaboration.
InnoScot Health believed it represented a valuable opportunity to meet and network with relevant partners, in addition to signing up to UNITE’s B2 Match service, which was also open to those unable to attend in person.
The digital matchmaking platform was used to help find collaborators across UNITE’s European network. InnoScot Health considered it a valuable opportunity to identify, connect, and network with relevant partners in other UNITE member regions.
To stay connected with project updates, participants were encouraged to follow the UNITE website or LinkedIn page.
