IPM Take
Europe has already set the direction. The harder part is turning cardiovascular prevention into something health systems can actually deliver.
The EU Safe Hearts Plan, adopted in December 2025, makes prevention, early detection and screening central pillars of European cardiovascular policy. It includes an EU protocol on cardiovascular health checks and supports Member States in developing national cardiovascular plans. The Commission’s first EU Screening Week will focus public attention on three familiar measures: blood pressure, cholesterol and blood glucose.
Belgium now offers a useful test of what implementation looks like on the ground. The country’s cardiology community is proposing that cardiovascular risk assessment should not sit in a separate screening programme, but be embedded into ordinary GP care and electronic records. The obstacle is not simply whether the measurements exist. Much of the information is already collected. The challenge is making it interoperable, actionable and consistent across a health system where prevention and treatment responsibilities are divided between different levels of government.
That turns cardiovascular screening from a medical question into a systems question.
Executive Summary
Belgium’s cardiovascular community is pushing for a national cardiovascular plan aligned with the EU Safe Hearts Plan, with a target of moving toward implementation in 2027. Belgian Society of Cardiology president Prof. Rik Willems told Euractiv that an interministerial working group has begun discussing the plan and that he hopes for rollout by summer 2027. That timing is an expectation from the cardiology leadership, not yet a confirmed government implementation date.
The proposed approach would place prevention largely within primary care. Blood pressure, laboratory results, kidney function and weight are often already present in general-practice records. The policy challenge is to select and integrate a cardiovascular risk score that can automatically identify missing information, update risk over time and prompt appropriate action.
The direction broadly matches recommendations published by a European multidisciplinary task force in January. For adults aged 35 to 65, the group proposed systematic cardiometabolic checks at least every five years, including blood pressure, lipid profile, glucose or HbA1c, kidney function and measures of adiposity, with frequency adapted to individual risk.
Why it matters
- HTA bodies: Prevention programmes increasingly combine diagnostics, digital infrastructure and clinical pathways rather than a single technology. Assessing value may therefore require looking at the full implementation model, not only individual tests.
- Payers: A programme that identifies more hypertension, dyslipidaemia, diabetes or renal disease also creates downstream treatment demand. Screening policy therefore has budget implications beyond the cost of the initial check.
- Industry / innovation partners: Risk engines, interoperable records and automated clinical decision support could become core infrastructure for cardiovascular prevention as Member States operationalise the Safe Hearts agenda.
The European cardiovascular strategy is moving from ambition to logistics.
The Commission’s Safe Hearts Plan, published in December 2025, is the EU’s first comprehensive cardiovascular health plan. It is built around prevention, early detection and screening, and treatment and care, supported by digital innovation, research and action on health inequalities. One of its ten flagship initiatives is an EU protocol for cardiovascular health checks.
The first EU Screening Week, beginning at the end of September, is designed to make that agenda visible. Its public message is deliberately simple: know your blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar.
Belgium’s emerging response shows what lies beneath that simplicity.
The Belgian Society of Cardiology and Belgian Heart League are advocating a national cardiovascular plan centred on prevention, better use of health data and more coordinated care. Cardiovascular disease already affects more than one million people in Belgium, according to the Belgian Alliance for Cardiovascular Health, which also reports nearly 30,000 cardiovascular deaths annually.
The proposed model would make greater use of general practice rather than constructing a separate screening infrastructure.
According to Willems, many of the relevant data points are already present in patient records. What is missing is a common system for turning them into longitudinal risk assessment. The ambition is for a GP’s electronic record to show the patient’s cardiovascular risk category, identify missing measurements and trigger appropriate follow-up as that risk changes.
That approach is consistent with wider European recommendations. A multidisciplinary task force involving cardiovascular, kidney, diabetes and obesity organisations has proposed integrated cardiovascular-renal-metabolic checks rather than isolated disease screening. For adults between 35 and 65, that would include blood pressure, a full lipid profile, glucose assessment, kidney function and measures of obesity, with more intensive assessment when risk is higher.
But Belgium also illustrates why collecting numbers is not the same as building a prevention programme.
Responsibilities for prevention are organised regionally, while significant parts of healthcare delivery and financing sit at federal level. Willems identified that division as one of the central coordination problems for a national plan. He also pointed to gaps in data: Belgium can track mortality, medication use and procedures relatively well, but lacks comprehensive information on whether recommended cardiovascular checks are actually reaching the population.
That gap matters because the Safe Hearts Plan is increasingly moving toward measurable implementation. The Commission is promoting earlier detection as part of a broader effort to reduce cardiovascular disease, which it says causes around 1.7 million deaths annually in the EU and costs more than €282 billion each year.
Belgium therefore does not lack risk factors to measure, medical guidelines or electronic information.
The harder question is whether those pieces can be made to function as one prevention system.
If that can be achieved, the cardiovascular check of the future may look less like a special screening appointment and more like something running continuously in the background of primary care.
