EU aims to bring medtech and biotech to patients more quickly

The European Commission is launching a four-year programme to better integrate medical technology and biotechnology and to accelerate the transition of innovations from research to clinical application and market launch. To this end, the European Med-Biotech Accelerator aims to bring together existing research infrastructures, biotech clusters, medtech companies and other stakeholders from various European countries.

The pilot is part of the European Competitiveness Coordination Tool (CCT). It has been launched in response to a problem that is also frequently encountered outside Europe: whilst a great deal of new technology is being developed, the transition from promising research to a validated and scalable product proves to be considerably more difficult.

According to the European Commission, the European medtech sector achieved a turnover of 170 billion euros in 2024 and employs more than 900,000 people. Since 2014, turnover is reported to have grown by approximately 60 per cent. The Commission also states that the biotech sector is growing faster than the European economy as a whole. At the same time, Europe is still not sufficiently successful in transforming its existing knowledge, infrastructure and innovations into market-ready products.

Connecting infrastructures

The accelerator’s primary aim is to better connect existing infrastructures and expertise. This includes, amongst other things, biotech clusters and innovation hubs, medtech SMEs, research institutions specialising in pre-clinical research, and centres focused on translating scientific results into clinical applications.

Subsequently, two specific medtech-biotech projects will be supported and validated. The European Commission cites oncology and cardiovascular diseases as potential areas of application. The projects must be guided from a relatively advanced stage of research towards industrial validation. This could, for example, lead to new precision diagnostics enabling the detection of cancer using just a few drops of blood, or to biological heart patches designed to repair or regenerate damaged heart tissue. These are examples of possible outcomes cited by the Commission and do not represent products already selected within the accelerator.

The programme runs until 2029. In 2026, the focus will be on identifying and connecting relevant stakeholders. In 2027, the pilot is to be set up and access to infrastructure organised. Industrial validation and further clinical trials are on the agenda for 2028. A year later, the focus is to shift to commercial strategies and preparing innovations for clinical application.

From patent to application

According to the Commission, the scale of European research activity is not the main problem. In 2025, thousands of patent applications were filed with the European Patent Office in the fields of both medical technology and biotechnology. The challenge lies primarily in the next steps: pooling expertise and infrastructure, validating products, attracting investment and, ultimately, scaling up.

The accelerator must therefore retain its value even after the first two projects. The aim is for the linked infrastructures to form a long-term European network that can later support more medtech and biotech developers. In this way, the initiative aligns with broader European plans to strengthen the biotech sector. Among other things, the pilot is intended to build on the investment ambitions set out in the proposal for the European Biotech Act. The Commission also refers to BioTechEU, an initiative of the European Investment Bank Group, which aims to mobilise a total of 10 billion euros for the biotech sector in 2026 and 2027.

The emphasis on scaling up is relevant because Europe already possesses extensive public and private research infrastructures. The accelerator should therefore not replace existing facilities, but rather better connect them and make them more accessible. The coming years will show whether linking existing infrastructures and expertise can actually prevent promising innovations from getting stuck between research, clinical validation and market launch.