Europe already has real strengths to build on: strong research institutions, clinical expertise and a growing base of healthtech startups. The harder question is whether Europe can connect these strengths into solutions that reach patients and health systems, rather than stalling at the pilot stage.
That question sits close to the digital sovereignty debate now underway in the European Parliament. In healthcare, sovereignty is usually framed around protecting data and reducing dependence on non-European technology providers. We would add a second dimension: the capacity to develop, validate and scale health innovation within Europe itself, on terms that reflect European values and the needs of patients, clinicians and health systems.
Through NetHub’s work with healthtech startups, clinicians, researchers and partners, the challenge we see most often is fragmentation. Promising startups and research teams struggle to reach clinical expertise, pilot sites, regulatory guidance, investment and international visibility – not because the ideas are weak, but because the system connecting them is thin. We see this most clearly close to home, in Croatia and the wider region, but the same pattern repeats across Europe: healthcare providers often have limited time and incentive to engage with new solutions, even ones that could solve real clinical or operational problems.
Closing that gap needs more structured collaboration between health payers, healthcare providers, researchers, startups, industry, investors, regulators and policymakers – with stronger links running from early development all the way through to real-world use.
Croatia’s role and opportunity
Croatia is gradually building up its health innovation base, with growing activity around digital health, medtech and AI-driven solutions across universities, hospitals, research institutes, startups, accelerators and EU-funded initiatives. But like other Southeast European markets (Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia and others), Croatia is simply too small on its own to give a promising healthtech startup the innovation ecosystem conditions it needs to compete. Croatia’s real opportunity lies less in scaling alone and more in pooling talent, clinical expertise and visibility across the region: combining its own strengths – technical and research talent, clinical expertise, growing digital health capacity – with those of its neighbours to reach European partners, test environments, specialised investors and markets that none of these countries could access alone.
Why visibility and connection matter
For NetHub, this means working at the ecosystem level: supporting early-stage healthtech companies, connecting them with clinical and research partners, and creating opportunities to test ideas, gain visibility and build international connections. Concretely, this is why NetHub runs a macro-regional startup programme connecting healthtech hubs across Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Montenegro and other countries in the region – so that markets too small to compete individually can build and secure the international visibility that none of them could reach alone. It also means bringing healthcare professionals in as active participants, not just end users, in defining unmet needs, testing solutions and shaping how they get adopted.
What we have seen work at regional level, Europe needs at its own level: a way for smaller, less visible ecosystems to pool what they have and be seen and used by the rest of the continent. One concrete step toward that more connected landscape would be a practical, Europe-wide overview of health innovation actors and capabilities: who is active, where clinical, research and startup expertise exists, which organisations support innovation, and where collaboration can realistically begin.
At NetHub, we believe Europe’s future in health innovation depends not only on building new technologies, but on creating the conditions for those technologies to actually reach patients, support clinicians, and strengthen health systems at scale.
Marko Mimica, CEO, NetHub
