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Download the Croatia State of Digital Healthcare IT 2026 Market Report
New from Black Book Research Insights: State of Digital Healthcare IT 2026: Croatia — a qualitative, buyer-ready market report on the state of EHR adoption, clinical products technology, interoperability, analytics, telehealth, population health, and AI in medicine and hospitals across one of Southeast Europe’s more nationally coordinated digital health environments. The report examines Croatia’s strong national e-health backbone, the still-diverse provider application landscape, workflow and diagnostics priorities, citizen-facing digital access, procurement and governance pressures, and the vendor and policy dynamics shaping healthcare IT decisions across the 2026–2030 planning horizon.
Why this report, why now
Croatia enters 2026 with digital health moving beyond basic transaction digitization and into a more demanding phase of operational performance. The national backbone is already real and functioning at scale through CEZIH, which now supports ePrescriptions, eReferrals, structured primary-care reporting, insurance checks, laboratory routing, and patient-facing access. Buyers are increasingly focused not on whether systems are digital, but on whether they improve workflow, strengthen care coordination, support diagnostics access, and deliver measurable value at the point of care.
At the same time, Croatia is not a one-platform healthcare IT market. It is a nationally coordinated but provider-diverse environment in which hospitals, primary care, pharmacies, laboratories, specialist institutions, and private providers continue to operate a mix of local hospital information systems, ambulatory software, laboratory systems, and imaging applications with varying levels of maturity and workflow depth. That changes where vendors win, how they position, and which capabilities matter most.
Two procurement realities are now decisive:
Croatia’s healthcare IT market is no longer being judged by basic digitization alone. It is increasingly being judged by how effectively CEZIH-connected infrastructure translates into better local workflow, faster care coordination, stronger diagnostics integration, cleaner reporting, and more usable patient access.
Winning increasingly depends on interoperability quality, scheduling efficiency, documentation usability, laboratory and imaging integration, resilience, governance discipline, and readiness for embedded analytics and AI-assisted care processes rather than on digital compliance alone.
Modernization in Croatia is now being evaluated through a broader lens: not only by transaction digitization, but by usability, continuity across settings, support for public-sector and HZZO-linked operating logic, secure infrastructure, and the ability to make an already digital system work better in daily care delivery.
Market signals at a glance
Selected indicators and market themes highlighted in the report underscore the scale and direction of digital healthcare momentum in Croatia:
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Croatia has moved beyond first-wave e-health adoption and now operates a nationally coordinated digital health architecture centered on CEZIH, with meaningful transaction volume and broad operational dependence.
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Portal zdravlja has more than 800,000 users and more than 20,000 daily users, confirming that citizen-facing digital health is no longer a niche service layer.
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More than 15 million eReferrals are issued annually, patients collect more than 61 million medicines each year through ePrescription workflows, more than 300,000 structured reports are transmitted daily through CEZIH, and more than 1.5 million insurance checks are performed each day.
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Croatia recorded 21,795 inpatient beds, 631,249 hospitalizations, and 1,345,014 day-hospital and one-day-surgery visits in 2024, making workflow quality, scheduling, reporting, and diagnostics integration strategically important rather than operationally optional.
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A major 2026 inflection point is the formal expansion of CEZIH data exchange requirements to private healthcare providers outside HZZO contracts, extending Croatia’s digital architecture beyond public-sector transaction digitization into a more comprehensive national health information environment.
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AI in Croatian healthcare is becoming practical rather than theoretical, with early momentum in imaging, diagnostics, structured reporting, scheduling support, communication, and documentation workflows, alongside the 2026 launch of ZdrAVKO, a public AI digital health assistant.
Register now to download the State of Digital Healthcare IT 2026: Croatia report — a practical market briefing for healthcare technology vendors, investors, provider executives, strategists, and transformation leaders evaluating where demand is strengthening, how Croatia’s national digital health architecture is reshaping competitive positioning, and which capabilities are becoming essential to win and deliver successfully in the next phase of healthcare IT modernization.
State of Digital Healthcare IT Croatia 2026
This report applies an 18-dimension Strategic Fit Framework grouped into four domains:
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Croatia is not an early-stage e-health market. It is a maturing, nationally coordinated digital health environment in which a strong central exchange architecture coexists with a still-diverse provider application layer spanning hospitals, primary care, pharmacies, laboratories, specialist institutions, and private providers.
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EHR adoption is already mature at the national transaction layer, but the next stage of the market is being shaped by provider-side performance, including documentation usability, interoperability quality, scheduling performance, diagnostics integration, resilience, and the practical deployment of analytics and AI in daily care delivery.
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Procurement and modernization priorities are shifting away from basic digital participation and toward technologies that align with CEZIH, HZZO logic, citizen access expectations, diagnostics workflow, access management, and sustainable operational improvement.
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Telehealth is already a meaningful part of the Croatian care model, with telemedicine services available in most healthcare institutions across the country and spanning radiology, cardiology, pulmonology, psychiatry, endocrinology, neurology, transfusion medicine, and haemodialysis.
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The Croatian market is increasingly being shaped by four strategic decision domains: clinical and operational effectiveness, interoperability and data quality, resilience and governance, and partnership and strategic alignment.