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Horizon Europe · European Union

Portable and versatile Point-of-care diagnostics

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The EU's Horizon Europe programme expects to make 6 awards of €5 million – €7 million each, from a total budget of €39.3 million. Applications close on 17 Feb 2027 (EU calls usually close at 17:00 Brussels time). Organisations in EU member states and Horizon Europe associated countries such as Türkiye can usually take part; the topic conditions control.

Expected outcome

This topic aims at supporting activities that are enabling or contributing to one or several expected impacts of destination “Maintaining an innovative, sustainable, and competitive EU health industry”. To that end, proposals under this topic should aim to deliver results that are directed at, tailored towards and contributing to all the following expected outcomes:

• Healthcare professionals dispose of diagnostic tools at the point of care that accelerate therapeutic decision making.

• Patients benefit from fast and accurate diagnosis leading to improved health outcomes.

• Thanks to more efficient diagnosis, health systems will get better evidence for disease control and prevention strategies.

Scope

Point-of-Care (PoC) medical testing has made great technical progress (e.g. improved extraction, microfluidics, miniaturisation, and data processing techniques) with PoC test accuracies nearly matching those of lab-based tests. PoC tests may thus be an alternative to laboratory testing methods, enabling faster diagnostic results and therapeutic decision making. However, PoC testing is not always achieving a completely accurate diagnosis and one of the major issues with PoC diagnostics is the occurrence of false results during testing, another one is the often-cumbersome sample preparation. Hence there is a need for PoC diagnostics that are more sensitive, selective and easy-to-use allowing for improved clinical practice.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has defined a set of criteria for PoC diagnostics in primary care which, in the advent of digital technologies, has been completed with two additional features and is represented by the acronym REASSURED: R eal-time connectivity, E ase of specimen collection and environmental friendliness, A ffordable, S ensitive, S pecific, U ser-friendly, R apid and robust, E quipment-free (or equipment-modest) and D eliverable to end users. To these criteria adds the feature of “sample-to-answer” (sometimes also called “sample-to-result”) and more challenges like: Miniaturisation, power supply, versatility (nature and origin of the human sample), biocompatibility of the used materials and their suitability for mass production, readiness for high-throughput testing, quality control, regulatory compliance, environmental footprint and, last but not least, cost, which is of particular concern in resource-limited settings. All these challenges are not only valid for PoC diagnostics developed for infectious diseases, they equally apply to those that are designed to detect non-communicable diseases as well as their continuous monitoring on patients. Mobile technologies are playing an important role, especially since around 70% of the globally 7.4 billion cell phone users live in developing countries, which are the areas in direct need of advanced and more accessible PoC diagnostics (lower density of relevant health infrastructure, e.g. hospitals and laboratory medicine testing facilities). Mobile phones have not only been proposed and tested for data acquisition and readout of assays, images and other results but also for sample processing (e.g. for heating step), as have been Machine-Learning/Artificial Intelligence (ML/AI) powered algorithms that are integrated in the diagnostic devices to analyse complex biological data and detect patterns that might be missed by human analysis.

Who can apply

Consortium of at least 3 independent legal entities from 3 different EU Member States or associated countries, at least one in a Member State (Horizon Europe standard rule).

Applicant categories are a starting point. The official call decides eligibility.

Topics

Clinical management Clinical trials Diagnostics Integrated care Pathology POC Point of care Point-of-care clinical trials diagnostics digital health in-vitro diagnostic medical device

Timing

Two-stage call. Next deadline 2027-02-17; later stage/cut-off 2027-09-16. The portal states the exact cut-off time (EU calls usually close at 17:00 Brussels time).

How to apply

1. Read the full topic on the Funding & Tenders Portal: expected outcome, scope, type of action and the topic conditions, including any country restrictions.
2. Register each participating organisation in the Funding & Tenders Portal to get a PIC.
3. Consortium of at least 3 independent legal entities from 3 different EU Member States or associated countries (Horizon Europe standard rule; Türkiye is associated). Confirm in the topic conditions.
4. Prepare Part A (administrative forms and budget, completed in the portal) and Part B (the technical description on the official template for this type of action).
5. Submit in the portal before the cut-off time on the deadline day. Late submissions are not accepted.

From the call text

Who can apply

Not stated in the call text we hold — check the official page

Company stage

Not stated in the call text we hold — check the official page

Single applicant or consortium

Read the topic conditions on the EU Funding & Tenders Portal for eligible countries, consortium requirements, budget and the application route.

Where applicants must be based

Read the topic conditions on the EU Funding & Tenders Portal for eligible countries, consortium requirements, budget and the application route.

Where to apply

Read the topic conditions on the EU Funding & Tenders Portal for eligible countries, consortium requirements, budget and the application route.

Read the EU application guide

Where these facts come from

Official sources

Official call page

Facts on this page come from the funder’s official data, taken on 14 Nov 2026. The funder's own documents, including later amendments, always take precedence.

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