The EIT Health Austria 2025 Recap

2025 showcased what our network does best: connecting expertise across Austria and Europe to move health innovation forward. Through focused conversations, new collaborations, and collaborative projects, we built momentum and strengthened partnerships. We’ve captured some of the year’s standout moments in this newsletter – click through to discover more:

• We met at countless events of the Austrian healthcare and innovation community, including the Life Sciences Partnering in Innsbruck, dHealth 2025, Science Connection in Tulln, the W-HIT Networking Breakfast, the Onco:Innovate, the Technology Talks Austria, the European Health Forum in Gastein, the 7th PRAEVENIRE Digital Health Symposion, the Future Health Lab DiGA Speeddating, the 7th HTH Styria, Salt’n’Venture in Salzburg, the LISAvienna Regulatory Affairs Conference and many more!

• Together with Aussenwirtschaft Austria we welcomed over 300 guests from 40 countries to the Health Days 2025, where we dived into the One Health approach and presented our EIT Health Austria EHDS Report.

• We jumped into the final year of our HealthGateway.Austria project funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), the Federal Ministry of Economy, Energy and Tourism, the Federal Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs, Health, Care and Consumer Protection and the Vienna Business Agency.

• We partnered with AustrianStartups to host two health-related “Stammtisch” events on digital health and health literacy as part of our HealthGateway.Austria project, featuring Angelika Lackner (Diamens), Eva Scharnagl (Diamens), Sophie Zettl (YGION Biomedical), Paul Kressnik (Health Pioneers), Antonia Riva-Frizberg (Lumetry Diagnostics), Ralph Steidl (Portabiles HealthCare Technologies), Daniela Schumacher (PsyCurio) and Barbara Sladek (Biome Diagnostics).

• We witnessed the European Health Data Space Regulation being published in the Official Journal of the European Union, which marked the beginning of the transition phase towards application.

• We hosted an inspirational webinar on the International Women’s Health Action Day together with EIT Health Spain to promote FemTech innovation in health, featuring Valentina Milanova (Daye), Judit Giró Benet (The Blue Box), Angelika Lackner (Diamens) and Carina Roth (Fund F).

• We collaborated with Health Hub Vienna to host another ViennaUp event – with the best view in town – on AI in healthcare, attracting more than 160 attendees…

• We helped shape another event in Brussels together with EIT Health Germany-Switzerland to further support the implementation of the EHDS and invited Klaus Donsa from AIT to showcase the SmartFox project as an Austrian best practice.

• We celebrated Cellectric Biosciences for winning at the European EIT Health Catapult finale in Amsterdam and ai:leen health’s third place at the EIT Health Open Innovation Breast Cancer Challenge in Madrid.

• We joined ARS Electronica as a part of a collaboration activity with the Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft Open Innovation in Science Center, EIT Culture & Creativity and Bayern Innovativ. Our panel with Georg Russegger, Rania Islambouli, Miriam Kathrein, Matthias Konrad and Aniko Fejes resulted in an opinion piece by our Team & Collaboration Lead – published on the official ARS blog.

• We teamed up with invest.Austria, Health Hub Tirol and Standortagentur Tirol to host a discussion on investor relations with the deep tech founders of the 2025 Hermann Hauser Frontier Lab in Innsbruck.

• Once again, we witnessed how our Austrian Partners implemented outstanding health innovation projects and programmes, incl. DigiDiab/GlucoTab (decide Clinical Software and Medical University Graz amongst others), EDITH (University for Continuing Education Krems and Medical University Graz amongst others), Top Female Founders (Boehringer Ingelheim and INiTS amongst others), BRIGHTskills (INiTS and University for Continuing Education Krems amongst others), and SmartFox (AIT amongst others).

• All of the above projects were featured by Daniela Lazo de la Vega Meyenberg (Universität für Weiterbildung Krems), Dr. Selma Mautner (Medizinische Universität Graz), Dr. Klaus Donsa (AIT Austrian Institute of Technology), and Elisabeth Krahulec (Boehringer Ingelheim) at our final event of 2025: the EIT Health Austria Ecosystem Day! We welcomed healthcare innovators, researchers, and academics to Vienna for a day of collaboration, learning, and connection. And all while enjoying a breathtaking view over the city centre…

• And, last but not least, we celebrated our 3-year anniversary in Austria!

We want to thank every member of our Austrian community for their interest and contribution not only in 2025, but also in 2024 and 2023! Your continued engagement drives our collective impact across Europe.

We are also grateful to our incredible funders on European and national level that were supporting our local work this year through Horizon Europe funding or through national funding in projects like HealthGateway.Austria or SmartFox (led by AIT):

The EIT – European Institute of Innovation & Technology, the Austrian Research Promotion Agency FFG, the Federal Ministry of Economy, Energy and Tourism, the Federal Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs, Health, Care and Consumer Protection, and the Vienna Business Agency.

As we transition to a simplified, future‑proof operational model of our overall organisation in the coming months, we invite all our followers in Austria to subscribe to the European EIT Health LinkedIn page for all EIT Health-related updates in 2026. The next year will bring new opportunities for collaboration – stay tuned on our European channel for updates on our simplified operational model and upcoming calls.

While we are reconfiguring our presence in Austria, we also invite you to consider the amazing service portfolio of the Vienna Business Agency when it comes to driving health innovation in the Austrian capital. The Tech4People Funding programme promotes the development of technological innovations that improve people’s lives and the life sciences page of the Vienna Business Agency, which now offers a great overview of Vienna’s ecosystem, as well as current support services, that will continue to expand in the near future.

With that positive outlook in mind: Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Your EIT Health Austria Team

Aniko V. Fejes, PhD | Michaela C. Topolnik | Peter Ulrich-Koziel | Melanie Hartl | Christos Vaitsis | Carolina G. Sabaté | Christiane Eddy