On 3–4 September 2026, the LINK-AGE Project, co-financed by the Interreg Central Europe Programme, officially launched its activities with a Kick-off Meeting held in Treviso, Italy.
LINK-AGE (Linking Regions for Innovative and Integrated Senior Care in Central Europe) aims to ensure coordinated, innovation-driven senior care across Central Europe, a region where ageing populations, fragmented governance and workforce shortages continue to hinder the quality and equity of service provision. Despite numerous EU and national initiatives, innovative care models rarely scale beyond individual territories, held back by incompatible systems, a lack of shared standards and weak cross-border cooperation. Through LINK-AGE, partners aim to reduce this fragmentation by building a coherent transnational framework that strengthens both innovation capacity and governance.
Nine project partners from Italy, Slovenia, Poland, Austria, Germany and Slovakia gathered to discuss and agree on the first steps towards scaling up and transferring validated innovative solutions in senior care, ensuring their integration into other regional and cross-border systems. Drawing on knowledge and experience from four previous Interreg projects — PROCAREFUL, CROSSCARE 2.0, DigiCare4CE and STAR — the partners will develop six pilot actions addressing ageing-related needs, ranging from prevention in home care settings to residential assistance. Building on these results, LINK-AGE will deliver action plans for the adapted pilot actions, a Central European Innovation Framework for Senior Care, a cooperation network and a Transnational Roadmap, ensuring the cross-cutting scale-up and transferability of its results and supporting innovation in senior care more broadly.
Drawing on its experience with the PROCAREFUL Network of organisations cooperating on the hybrid care model, the CEI-Executive Secretariat will further capitalise on and transfer the project's experience and knowledge to external actors and relevant policymakers. It will contribute to building the Central European innovation framework for senior care and to raising awareness of the project and its results. In addition, the CEI will strengthen and expand its expertise in the health and wellbeing sector, sharing it across its established network.
For more info: sinkovic@cei.int