More than one in three Europeans live in a cross-border territory. Cooperation between health services, facilities, providers and authorities has the potential to transform proximity to a border from a common problem to a joint opportunity leading to better health outcomes, local innovation, jobs, and growth.

Setting up cooperation projects across borders is notoriously tricky. But it needn’t be that way. This is why the European Commission is organising the Conference "Enhancing Healthcare Cooperation in Cross-border Regions" on 4 December 2018, to present the results of a pioneering mapping study of successful cooperation projects and its toolkit for practitioners interested in setting up cross-border cooperation themselves.

Aimed principally at professionals in the health and cooperation fields, this compact event showcases good practices and creative solutions in cross-border health cooperation, and the challenges that border regions have encountered and overcome.

Examples of health cooperation vary from information-sharing, to streamlined patient mobility, to jointly managed hospitals, innovative technologies and eHealth solutions.

What to expect…

Keynotes, panels and workshops/brainstorming sessions explore priority themes including policy imperatives, patient services (treatments, diagnostic, emergency care), training, investment and other healthcare enablers, as well as the role of innovation and knowledge-sharing across borders.

The conference is a prime opportunity to discuss new perspectives in cross-border healthcare and help shape future programming to tackle stubborn administrative, financial, legal, linguistic, demographic and cultural barriers to success. Delegates can discover how cross-cutting EU policies and pioneering efforts can make a tangible difference on the ground.

Because when it comes to saving lives and caring for people in need, health always transcends territory. This is the spirit and working rationale behind the European Commission's support to territorial cooperation in border areas – the so-called INTERREG programmes – and other regional activities.

The main conference language will be English, but presentations may also take place in other languages. Interpretation services will be available between English, French, German, Polish, Italian and Spanish.