Transforming healthcare supply chains across Europe from linear to circular.

By bringing together a buyers group of leading healthcare organisations and a broader community of interest, REHEAL aims to build a scalable, evidence-based model for circular healthcare that strengthens resilience, reduces waste, and drives climate-friendly innovation across the sector.

Healthcare supply chains remain heavily dependent on single-use materials, resource-intensive devices, and linear “take–make–dispose” patterns. These systems contribute significantly to environmental impact, create vulnerabilities in procurement, and limit the reuse or recovery of valuable materials.

REHEAL addresses these challenges by developing the tools, processes, and technologies needed to enable reverse healthcare supply chains, systems designed to recover, refurbish, recycle or repurpose products in safe, efficient and compliant ways.

What REHEAL will deliver?

REHEAL will produce a coordinated set of outputs that make circular healthcare supply chains operational, scalable, and procurement-ready across Europe.

Outputs and evidence

  • A common REHEAL Challenge Statement reflecting the priorities, needs and constraints of European healthcare providers.

  • A set of validated use cases and service-process models showing how circularity can be implemented across clinical and logistical workflows.

  • Feasibility studies, concept designs, and functional prototypes, developed with suppliers through a structured Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) process.

  • Pilot testing in real healthcare settings, demonstrating how circular and reverse supply-chain solutions work in practice and what is required for safe, compliant adoption.

Community and capacity building

  • A Buyers Group and a wider Follower Community, enabling shared learning, replication, and Europe-wide market development.

  • Toolkits, training materials and capacity-building resources, equipping health systems, suppliers and supply-chain partners to adopt circular approaches.

Policy and continuity

  • Policy and regulatory recommendations, including data, procurement and sustainability guidance to support system-wide transition.

  • A Joint Procurement Agreement and a roadmap for future Public Procurement of Innovation (PPI), enabling Buyers to continue procurement of successful solutions beyond the project.

Our Approach

REHEAL uses a Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) process. This approach enables buyers to work directly with suppliers to co-design, prototype, and test solutions that do not yet exist but are essential for making circular supply chains viable in real-world healthcare settings. By shaping innovation around verified user needs, the project accelerates development while ensuring that solutions are practical, interoperable, and ready for adoption.

Central to REHEAL’s approach is structured co-design and community building. Through surveys, workshops, Living Labs and cross-regional learning, the project enables clinicians, supply-chain professionals, sustainability officers, policymakers, and technical partners to jointly define the REHEAL challenge, shape use cases, and inform service-process models. This ensures that all innovation activity is grounded in the realities of European healthcare systems. 

PCP, Fast Track PCP? In a PCP, multiple suppliers are contracted in parallel to develop solutions that do not yet exist on the market. The process starts with solution design and feasibility, and the number of contractors is reduced before the next stage. REHEAL's fast track PCP combines prototyping and piloting into a single stage, shortening the innovation cycle and getting results into use sooner.

Who We Are

The REHEAL consortium brings together:

  1. Five Buyers, representing over 260 hospitals, 300,000 healthcare workers, and 17 million patients

  2. Universities and research centres specialising in sustainability, supply-chain design, data, innovation and public sector transformation

  3. Innovation partners, including CivTech and 28DIGITAL, supporting challenge design, supplier engagement and PCP execution

  4. Regional and national health authorities, providing regulatory and operational insight

  5. A Europe-wide community of Followers, ensuring broader applicability, knowledge transfer and future replication

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