Representatives of 53 countries adopted joint plans for healthy ageing and artificial intelligence in health at a regional committee meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 29 October 2026. Officials announced a healthy-ageing strategy for 2026–2030 alongside the European health region’s first roadmap for AI in health.
The two plans set out policy directions rather than services already delivered. The ageing strategy addresses prevention, care, people’s functional ability and the environments in which they live. The AI roadmap aims to support safer and fairer integration of the technology across health systems.
Officials said the healthy-ageing strategy was adopted unanimously. Its scope extends across the life course, rather than concentrating solely on care in older age. Prevention and functional ability are central to that approach, placing the emphasis on healthier, longer lives as well as the support people may need.
Four priorities for healthy ageing
The strategy has four focus areas: prevention and functional ability across the life course; health and long-term care; age-friendly environments; and tackling ageism. Together, these give the plan a scope that reaches beyond healthcare provision alone, while retaining care as a central part of its framework.
The focus on health and long-term care sits alongside the priority given to age-friendly environments. Tackling ageism is a separate strand. These are adopted priorities for the five-year strategy, not evidence that changes to care, surroundings or attitudes have already taken place across the participating countries.
Implementation is to use country profiles and an ageing dashboard, officials said. Those tools form part of the next stage of work. Their inclusion does not establish that the strategy’s goals have been achieved, and the adoption announcement should be distinguished from subsequent progress in individual countries.
AI use outpaces some safeguards
The AI roadmap comes as the technology is already being used in diagnosis across much of the region. Officials said nearly two in three countries use AI for that purpose. That is a country-level measure of reported use, rather than a measure of how many patients receive AI-assisted care.
Officials also said training, legal review and coverage by health-specific strategies lag behind AI use. The indicators describe an uneven policy and preparedness picture: the presence of the technology in health systems does not, by itself, establish that the supporting arrangements are equally developed.
The roadmap’s stated aim is safer and fairer integration across health systems. Its adoption establishes a shared direction for that work, but does not demonstrate that every existing use of AI is safe or fair, or that gaps in training and governance have been closed.
The distinction matters when interpreting the diagnosis figure. It indicates how widespread use has become among countries, but it does not establish clinical outcomes, the quality of particular applications or the extent of legal scrutiny. The supplied indicators concern uptake and the arrangements surrounding it.
Implementation remains the next step
Officials said the AI roadmap is to receive a midterm update in 2029. That provides a future point for considering its implementation, rather than a present assessment of results. For healthy ageing, country profiles and the dashboard are the identified tools for taking the strategy forward.
The Copenhagen decisions therefore bring two areas of public-health policy into a joint regional agenda: healthier ageing across the life course and the integration of AI into health systems. Both plans have been adopted, while their intended benefits remain goals to be pursued through implementation rather than completed outcomes.
