In November 2025, the EU-funded BRIDGE project (Breakthrough Regulatory Innovation and Development throuGh sandbox Environments) officially began its mission to deliver a framework for regulatory sandboxes for emerging health technologies in Europe.
The project, which is a flagship of the Innovative Health Initiative (IHI), held a successful two-day kick-off and General Assembly meeting on 19–20 November in Brussels, Belgium, where all partners met to set the direction for the next three years.
Highlights of the kick-off meeting included:
- Keynotes from UK and Singapore regulators, who shared lessons from running real-world sandboxes such as MHRA’s AI Airlock and Singapore’s GenAI Sandbox.
- Contributions from IHI and European Commission DG RTD, emphasising the strategic importance of sandbox methodologies for the modernisation of the EU regulatory system and reforms – including the Pharmaceutical Package, AI Act implementation, and health data governance.
- Interactive World Café sessions, fostering cross-fertilisation of ideas across work packages and where partners collaborated on each work package, identified synergies, and risks, and co-developed next steps for the first months of the project.
