AI health start-ups lead Europe’s push for competitiveness in healthcare innovation

As Europe navigates an increasingly competitive global AI healthcare landscape, Spanish health tech start-up Tucuvi is making headlines by becoming the first voice-based AI solution in Europe to gain Class IIb medical device certification. The company’s medical voice assistant, LOLA, which enables remote patient monitoring through conversational AI, is a standout example of European leadership in healthcare innovation.

Tucuvi’s breakthrough, backed by ISO 13485 certification and tailored support from EIT Health programmes, comes at a critical moment. A new AI skills report jointly released by EIT Health and EIT Digital highlights the urgent need for upskilling across Europe to remain competitive on the global stage in AI healthcare applications. The report calls for a coordinated European strategy to build human capital in AI and digital health.

Tucuvi’s rapid progress also exemplifies what the AI skills report stresses: combining deep sector expertise and interdisciplinary soft skills as a key differentiator for European AI companies. The company’s trajectory underscores the strategic role EIT Health plays in nurturing start-ups from ideation to internationalisation, with accelerator programmes offering access to mentors, regulators, and pharma partners across Europe. Impactful innovation happens when education, research, and business are brought together in applied, practical ways, and enabled to exchange skills fluidly across disciplines. The most impactful advances in AI and healthcare stem from this convergence of technical, scientific, and managerial capabilities.

A European wave of AI-driven health innovation

Tucuvi’s success is part of a pan-European wave of AI-enabled health innovation emerging from the EIT Health ecosystem. Their solution supports decision making when delivering diagnoses with reliable and safe data. Across Europe, start-ups are leveraging artificial intelligence to transform diagnostics, treatment, and patient care, with many achieving regulatory milestones and global commercial traction thanks to EIT Health’s multi-stage support model.

BrainTrip, based in Malta, has developed the NeuroAI platform, which interprets EEG data to deliver fast, non-invasive cognitive assessments. Its flagship tool, the BrainTrip Dementia Index (CogniScore), is CE‑marked and achieves roughly 95% diagnostic accuracy within a 30-minute test, compared to traditional neuropsychological evaluations that last over an hour. With over 2,000 tests performed, BrainTrip is scaling in Europe with EIT Health support in regulatory strategy, mentoring, and clinical integration.

These start-ups reflect a growing pan-European innovation movement, grounded in regulatory readiness, cross-sector integration, and patient-first design.

Their momentum aligns with key insights from the EIT Health and EIT Digital AI Skills and Occupations in the European Start-up Ecosystem, which calls for a unified European strategy to combine technical excellence, ethical standards, and practical implementation. These start-ups show that such a strategy is not only possible – it’s already underway.

Building European leadership in AI for health

The AI Skills and Occupations in the European Start-up Ecosystem report urges the EU to invest not only in technical AI skills but also in clinical integration, ethics, and entrepreneurship. Tucuvi’s case provides a working blueprint. Its voice assistant has already conducted millions of patient calls – reducing clinician workload while maintaining safety and empathy, a balance often lacking in early AI solutions.

With CE-marked, AI-powered medical solutions gaining traction across Europe, supported by the strategic upskilling and interdisciplinary collaboration EIT Health enables, the continent is strengthening its position in the global landscape of AI adoption in healthcare.