COVID-19 & Healthtech Discussions

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One of the FutureMed 2020 participators NHSX CEO, Matthew Gould said: "We won’t necessarily stick where we are, we won’t go back to where we were before". You can't say better.

The COVID topic continues to be relevant this week. New technology initiatives and medical startups continue to grow like weeds.

Like Ottawa health-tech startup that draws on VR technology to make surgeons' jobs easier, or Italian startup InSilicoTrials that raises €3 million to democratize simulation technology for medical research.

Online health startup Ro headquartered in NYC raises $200 million on $1.5 billion valuation, furthering its business of offering customers digital medical advice.

There is also a startup not connected to COVID topic, nevertheless, a very special one — it monitors heart health with a toilet seat. And maybe it will seem ridiculous to someone (you should take it seriously), but Ayurveda has burst into the healthtech — Indian Ayurveda-tech wellness Startup WE R Wellness.

Health and healthtech companies are also keeping it real.

Like Fitango Health that announced an innovative API-based patient engagement platform, integrating telehealth with active patient engagement. Or Belfast-based Neurovalens that raises £5 million for clinical trials of its neurostimulation tech. Or Vareger, a wide-profile IT company that have created a PCM — Public Contacts Monitor for infection prevention. It helps users with tracking possibly dangerous contacts and let people know about them. It's been uploaded on Google Play recently, download it here.

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Healthcare industry and healthtech remain very attractive.

Even those who have never dealt with it are now investing in it. As, for example, Aselsan, Turkish defense giant with the announced intention to release first medical devices this year for use in hospitals.

Or UAE's Strata — Mubadala Investment Company’s aerospace manufacturing unit, the region’s biggest producer of advanced composite aircraft parts (we wrote about it before).

It's attractiveness grows for the insurers (Angle Health has announced $4 million series seed to launch tech-enabled health insurance plans for startups) and for venture capital — like Israel's largest venture capital investor in life sciences, AMoon, that boosted the size of its biggest fund to $750 million after demand for new healthcare technology rose during the coronavirus pandemic.

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Economics, COVID, financing and the role of technology in all this remain one of the biggest concerns in the world, and people continue to discuss these questions.

Global health tech leaders came together for FutureMed 2020, a broadcast conference featuring perspectives and practical insights from world leaders, decision-makers and experts on responding to COVID-19. They were discussing COVID-19 as an effective accelerator of digital health.

And you're wrong if you think medics and tech discussing the same things over and over again. The Boston Globe Consulting can prove it. They've analysed 150 mln media articles and revealed that the technology discourse has shifted during COVID. COVID-19 boosted the number of articles written about 5G, data analytics and delivery drones. Just take a look.