EIT Health Headstart

EIT Health Headstart

Offers European health founders early support from EIT Health through mentorship, networks, and commercialization guidance.

Eligibility · EU member states

EIT Health Headstart is an early-stage funding and support programme operated by EIT Health, a Knowledge and Innovation Community of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) established in 2015 and headquartered in Munich, Germany. The programme is designed to help proof-of-concept healthcare innovations — spanning medtech, digital health, and health data applications — advance toward clinical and market validation. EIT Health operates as a public-private partnership across Europe, and its Headstart instrument targets the Regional Innovation Scheme (RIS) geography, prioritising innovators in Central, Eastern, and Southern European countries that are underrepresented in European health innovation funding.

Awards are in the range of €50,000–€75,000 per project in the form of equity or equity-equivalent financial support, reflecting EIT Health's investment-oriented model. Eligible applicants include for-profit companies and research or academic institutions at TRL 5–8 that are registered in designated EIT Health InnoStars regions. Projects must involve a minimum of two legal partners from at least one eligible country, with both a business organisation and an academic or healthcare partner represented. Mobile applications not integrated into complex products are typically ineligible. Focus areas historically include brain and mental health, infectious diseases, and digital health enablement.

The Headstart programme — as a distinct branded call — has been consolidated into the RIS Innovation Call strand of EIT Health's portfolio; no standalone Headstart call page was live as of the 2026 research fetch. Cycle cadence has been annual; the most recently documented RIS call closed in October 2022, with the next cycle subject to EIT Health's annual business plan. Applicants should monitor eithealth.eu for updated call announcements.