DIGITALEUROPE is leading the development of a pioneering EU Health Industry SkillsStrategy, designed to support the upskilling and reskilling of Europe’s healthcare industrial workforce.
The Strategy will set out a clear roadmap to equip professionals from Europe’s health industries with the skills needed to thrive in the evolving digital landscape. The first edition of theStrategy is expected to be released in the second half of 2026.
A core ambition of DIGITALEUROPE is to develop a skills strategy that truly reflects the realities of Europe’s healthcare companies, capturing the challenges and skills gaps companies face in workforce planning and development and the opportunities and solutions that are already proving effective.
By identifying and analysing existing good practices from across Europe, the strategy will build on what works, allowing successful approaches to upskilling and reskilling to be scaled, adapted, and replicated across the healthcare ecosystem. This ensures the strategy is practical, future-oriented, and firmly rooted in employers’ real workforce needs.
To achieve this, the strategy is co-created with a wide range of stakeholders, bringing together the perspectives of current and future workers, healthcare companies, industry leaders, and policymakers throughout its design, implementation, and evaluation.
The consultation began in the summer of 2025 and focused on gathering and analysing existing initiatives, programmes, and policies related to upskilling and reskilling across the four BRIGHTskills health industries. This initial mapping helped identify both common challenges and emerging solutions in workforce development within the healthcare industrial ecosystem.
To enrich the analysis and broaden perspectives, the consultation also drew on good practices from other relevant and highly regulated sectors facing similar skills transitions—including, for example Artificial Intelligence. These sectors offer valuable insights into large-scale reskilling, digital transformation, and the anticipation of future skills needs, which can be adapted to the specific context of healthcare industries.
Below, Wiktoria Orlowska from DIGITALEUROPE shares insights and reflections from leading this work.
Why is collecting these types of good practices important?
This work comes at a crucial moment. Europe faces workforce shortages, rapid digitalisation, and the growing influence of AI.Collecting and learning from best practices supports the sector to respond faster and more effectively to these transformations, ensuring that Europe’s health industry remains resilient, inclusive, and competitive. Our aim was to:
Can you remind our audience, how you collected the best practices?
Practices were collected through a pre-designed questionnaire distributed across 24 project partners and their networks, as well as promoted on the project’s online communications channels. To complement the data collection, a focus group discussion involving experts was held to qualitatively review and assess the submitted initiatives. Through this process, the group reached a shared understanding of which practices demonstrate the highest potential for impact, innovation, and transferability.
How many practices have you collected?
We collected 119 individual practices representing 32 initiatives across nine countries. The collected initiatives came from European, national, and regional levels. They included public initiatives, public–private partnerships and private initiatives. Submissions covered a wide range of approaches to learning and skills development, including: interactive teaching methods, interdisciplinary training models, open pedagogy principles, and national training platforms supporting large-scale up-and reskilling.
Our initial impression is that the submitted practices demonstrate strong creativity and collaboration.Many initiatives go beyond traditional education models, bridging gaps between health, technology, and policy while fostering lifelong learning.
Examples include:
These examples show how effective initiatives can be scaled or adapted across regions and sectors.
What value do the best practices bring to the BRIGHTskills project?
They serve as a valuable resource for industry stakeholders, educators, and policymakers, involved in developing skills in digital health, MedTech, medical supplies, pharmaceuticals and biomanufacturing. Including them in the strategy will help these groups to:
Ultimately, this work will benefit the BRIGHTskills audience by turning data into actionable knowledge - supporting the design of more effective, inclusive, and future-oriented skills programmes across Europe.
What’s next?
This collection will form the foundation for future collaboration, pilot actions, and policy recommendations and help to shape the implementation of the EU Health Industry Skills Strategy, which will be made open for public consultation.
By sharing what already works, BRIGHTskills will create a learning ecosystem where successful initiatives can inspire, guide, and empower healthcare companies across Europe.
