EU Strategy for Danube Region is leading the way with innovative cross-border cooperation initiatives such as Healthacross for Future, HEAL NOW, and the overarching Healthacross Initiative that ensure timely and high-quality medical care for all citizens, regardless of geography.
Bridging Borders to Save Lives in the Danube Region
- 07 April 2025
The Cross-border Emergency Healthcare flagship initiative serves as a platform for improving emergency healthcare services across national borders. With a focus on interoperability, legal harmonization, and efficient communication between healthcare systems, this initiative aims to ensure that patients in Danube border regions receive timely and high-quality emergency care, regardless of which side of the border they reside.
By bringing together policy makers, healthcare providers, and emergency services, this flagship initiative promotes transnational collaboration, knowledge exchange, and the development of best practices. The ultimate goal is a seamless and coordinated healthcare response system in the Danube Region that transcends administrative borders.
The Healthacross for Future project builds on over a decade of successful cooperation between Austria and the Czech Republic. This initiative seeks to institutionalise and expand cross-border healthcare in a sustainable manner, making it a permanent feature of regional healthcare planning. It promotes integrated care models, joint training programs, and shared emergency services – all with the ultimate goal of improving healthcare access and outcomes in rural and border regions.
The HEAL NOW project – a collaboration between Austria and Hungary – focuses on enhancing emergency medical response systems using digital tools. By developing a cross-border telemedicine network, improving ambulance coordination, and ensuring language interoperability for emergency teams, HEAL NOW helps reduce response times and save lives. This project exemplifies how digital transformation can bolster public health preparedness in border regions.
The broader Healthacross Initiative is a longstanding model for cross-border collaboration. Initiated by Lower Austria, the initiative demonstrates how regions can work together to provide patient-centered, cost-effective healthcare. It encompasses multiple projects and partnerships with neighbouring countries, and its success is built on trust, shared protocols, and political will. Healthacross continues to inspire new initiatives and policy development at both national and European levels
These projects demonstrate that borders do not need to be barriers to care. Through joint planning, shared resources, and common goals, the Danube Region is laying the foundation for a borderless healthcare system – one that prioritizes patients and promotes equity, innovation, and resilience.
The European Commission strongly supports these efforts, as they contribute to European Union's Directive 2011/24/EU on patients' rights in cross-border healthcare.
For more insights into this Danube Strategy Flagship on cross-border healthcare initiatives, visit the link.