How Smart Health Europe will help innovate healthcare at scale

Voices from the Data2Value Executive Dialogue in Copenhagen: Igor Palka, Senior Vice President at Messe Berlin – the makers of Smart Health Europe (Berlin, Germany – October 26-28, 2027)

We are very fortunate to have healthcare systems with high quality and broad accessibility. But in order to sustain that, we need to innovate. We need to innovate with scale.

With these words, Igor Palka, Senior Vice President at Messe Berlin, outlined the vision behind Smart Health Europe — a new initiative designed to bring together healthcare leaders, innovators, users, and payers to discuss how Europe can scale healthcare innovation for long-term impact.

Rather than focusing on isolated pilot projects or fragmented digital initiatives, Smart Health Europe aims to create a platform where different stakeholders can collectively address the structural challenges facing healthcare systems across Europe.

Palka emphasised that sustaining Europe’s healthcare systems will require more than technological progress alone. Innovation must move beyond experimentation and become scalable, collaborative, and system-oriented.

His message reflects a growing consensus across the healthcare sector: Europe’s future competitiveness and resilience in healthcare will depend on the ability to connect innovation with implementation at scale.

As healthcare systems face increasing pressure from demographic change, workforce shortages, rising costs, and growing demand, initiatives such as Smart Health Europe seek to strengthen dialogue between decision-makers and accelerate the exchange of practical solutions across borders.

“We will bring together healthcare leaders, innovators, users and payers all in one room in order to discuss innovations and how to scale innovations in future,” said Palka.

Because if Europe wants to preserve the strength and accessibility of its healthcare systems, collaboration will become just as important as innovation itself.

Igor Palka is Senior Vice President at Messe Berlin and part of the leadership behind Smart Health Europe.