The EC publishes the new EU Global Health Strategy

The EU Global Health Strategy, aims to establish the EU as a major geopolitical player in healthcare and has been shaped by the perceived shortcomings during the COVID-19 outbreak. The Commission has stated health is now a “geopolitical issue”.
The strategy aims at improving global health security and ensuring better health for citizens, by addressing a range of communicable diseases, such as AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and neglected tropical diseases.
Of particular relevance for the in silico medicine community is the fact that the strategy recognizes the need for maximising new opportunities for health offered by powerful enablers, like research and digitalisation, including the use of artificial intelligence.

Key highlights

The new EU Global Health Strategy offers a framework for EU health policies leading up to 2030. In concrete terms, the European Commission put forward three key priorities, namely:

• providing better healthcare for people and their well-being;
  
• strengthening health systems and advancing universal health coverage;
  
• preventing and controlling health threats, including pandemics, whilst taking into account the One Health approach.
  

To achieve these three priorities, the Commission proposes several lines of actions, among which :

• support regional and country efforts to strengthen pharmaceutical systems and manufacturing capacity;
  
• boost investments in digital health and care in low and middle-income countries;
  
• make the EU a pioneer in the regulation of health data at a global level;
  
• contribute to shaping the digital health ecosystem globally in terms of rules, norms, standards, and interoperability;
  
• support research and boost international collaboration in research and innovation while ensuring that research data is as open, standardized, and interoperable as feasible.
• foster the development of and access to innovative medical countermeasures to address AMR, including antimicrobials, vaccines, and diagnostics.

Lastly, to achieve the objectives of the Strategy, the EU executive calls for new European governance to provide leadership, mobilising all internal and external policies for global health, using Team Europe’s “single, powerful” voice, strengthening coordination with Member States by linking actions and funds to health priorities and monitoring the implementation of the Strategy. Support from the EU4Health programme is envisaged for this project, with the indicative timeline expected for the second half of 2023.

Next steps

• The Swedish Presidency of the EU is expected to lead the EU Member State´s conclusions on this strategy and make crucial decisions on available resources to fund this strategy.