Europe launches TEF‑Health, a pan‑European testing and experimentation infrastructure for medical AI and robotics. The goal is to accelerate the safe rollout of innovations into practice and help especially smaller companies move from the laboratory to real hospital environments. The project, backed by 60 million euros, brings together 52 partners and emphasizes trust, safety, and compliance with regulations.
Why bet on AI in healthcare
Europe’s healthcare systems face an aging population, a rise in chronic diseases, staff shortages, and significant inequalities between regions. Artificial intelligence has already demonstrated the potential to improve the accuracy, speed, and capacity of data analysis as well as care delivery, which became evident especially during the pandemic. Benefits are visible from clinical research and drug trials to oncology, neurology, emergency medicine, and home care and mental health care. At the same time, concerns persist about “black boxes,” liability, transparency, privacy protection, and hidden biases, which hinder real‑world deployment.
TEF‑Health: real‑world testing
The initiative was created under the Digital Europe program, which establishes specialized testing and experimentation facilities for AI in four areas: healthcare, agri‑food, manufacturing, and smart city. TEF‑Health provides realistic clinical environments, data and simulators, as well as expertise in clinical practice, AI, law, ethics, standardization, and certification. A unified “one‑stop” entry point ensures that solutions can be tested from lab to hospital and reach the market faster.
The project focuses on four priority areas: cardiovascular diseases, cancer, neurology, and intensive care – diagnoses with a major impact on society and budgets. Its aim is to align machines with human values, enable extensive testing of software and robotics, develop tools for quality control, and ensure compliance with legal, ethical, and interoperability standards. Training is also included so that users gain the competencies needed for high‑quality and ethical use of AI.
Who makes up the network and how it helps companies
The consortium is led by the Charité hospital in Germany and involves 52 partners across Europe – from university hospitals and medical faculties to metrology institutes, certification bodies, and innovation clusters. Services will be available to small and medium‑sized enterprises in all EU countries, often with support in the form of state aid. An important ambition is to improve smaller companies’ access to data and clinical testing, since patents and infrastructures are currently held mainly by a few large players and complex regulation pushes them to non‑European markets.
The Swedish node also plays a strong role, bringing together Karolinska Institutet, Karolinska University Hospital, SciLifeLab, and the research organization RISE. It offers a unique imaging and “omics” infrastructure, radiopharmacy, facilities for advanced imaging including non‑human primates, and top‑tier expertise in cybersecurity and IoT security. TEF‑Health also aligns procedures with European initiatives such as Genomic Data Infrastructure, Health Data Sweden, and the European Federation for Cancer Images, so that solutions work across hospitals, regions, and countries. The project is in the first year of a five‑year period and aims to increase the efficiency, resilience, and sustainability of health systems and reduce inequalities in access to care.
