Mobile Applications in Healthcare
10 MedTech Startups Driving the Healthcare Industry
A curated list of startups and their success stories from various healthcare sectors
There’s no doubt that MedTech mobile apps happen to be the revolution for the healthcare industry. Technology startups proved that innovations can tangibly contribute to patients’ treatment and well-being, and the medical branch still generates countless opportunities for developing the next MedTech startups. How did those innovative ideas grow and what helped them succeed in the long term? Let's catch a glimpse of the most successful startups in medical technology industry and look at lessons to learn from them.
How does one build a healthcare startup?
Most of the modern healthcare products are MedTech mobile apps, online platforms or solutions based on Augmented Reality (AR) or Virtual Reality (VR). Of course, building a medical startup requires not only advanced technology, but also wide medical knowledge. Unlike any other branch, to succeed in medical product development it is critical to get a 360-degree view of the problem you aim to solve.
Startups are, all in all, also about the business, and financial support is obviously crucial to succeed. You can raise the initial capital by joining a healthcare incubator or accelerator providing financial support for MedTech startups. The other way is the cooperation with a VC focused on the MedTech branch - you can find few of them listed here.
The contribution of such serious investors can ensure bespoke development and long-term growth. There are also few examples of successful kickstarter campaigns launched by MedTech startups, with Lightpoint Medical, Hibergene Diagnostics and Aura Medical among others, so this funding model is also worth considering.
Success stories of MedTech startups
Modern healthcare products assist in various medical procedures - starting with diagnoses, health condition monitoring or encouraging to healthy lifestyle, and finishing with writing up prescriptions and scheduling appointments. Then, if you're already open to founding your own healthcare startup, it's time to catch a glimpse of what you can learn from the most innovative and market-driving players kicked off recently.
FibriCheck
FibriCheck is a medically approved mobile tool measuring heart rate with just a mobile app, with no additional medical equipment. This innovative healthcare product is able to detect irregularities and prevent strokes – what means reaching the point when using a smartphone app might become life-saving. This groundbreaking idea was supported by multiple investors, including Arch Summit, EIT Health, iMinds and more, and now is widely used and promoted by healthcare companies and organisations like Cigna, H. Essers or MSD.
Heal
Heal is a MedTech mobile app for scheduling medical home visits, offering services covered by many insurance plans. This simple idea helped nearly 16.000 people and managed to reach almost 70 million dollars during their first three years, mostly by engaging multiple venture capitals (Breyer Capital, Slow Ventures, Hashtag One, Fidelity Management and Research) and private investors like Paul Jacobs, David Ellison or Lionel Richie. Since 2018 Heal has been intensively expanding numerous locations in the US.
Psyomics
Psyomics is an example of mobile first MedTech startup dedicated to mental health care. It supports prevention, increases diagnostic accuracy and improves the access to the reliable support, as the number of patients suffering from mental diseases increases each year. The project was funded by Cambridge Enterprise and Horizon 2020 grant among other institutions.
To read more about development stages of this successful healthcare product, feel free to check out the case study on our website.
Suki
Suki is the example of AI healthcare startup being a voice assistant for doctors. To help health professionals focus on their core actions, Suki assists in examinations, operations and administrative stuff by showing the data of the patient, writing up prescriptions and making notes. This project and its unique mission to take the tedious administrative tasks away from doctors were supported by premier venture capitals like Venrock, Marc Benioff or First Round, and was honoured with multiple awards associated with healthcare, business and technology (issued by Forbes, Rock Health and the Voice of Healthcare Summit among others).
Skin Vision
Skin Vision is a machine-learning based app detecting and analysing skin abnormalities, able to prevent even skin cancer. To do the self-check, the patient needs to take a photo of the skin spot, and wait 30 second to receive the risk indication. This simple tool allows the patient to check his skin moles regularly at minimum effort, which improves the efficiency of skin diseases diagnoses and prevention.
Touch Surgery
Touch Surgery is a modern tool for teaching surgery, based on AR technology creating top quality surgical simulations. This healthcare product supports residents in practicing surgery in a safe and precise way via interactive surgical simulator providing a realistic guide through all the steps of the procedures. It’s widely used in residency and surgical training programs all over the world, and brings medical revolutionary also to the Third World countries like Tanzania and Kenya.
IDx
IDx is an AI healthcare technology diagnosing eye diseases. It increases the efficiency of detecting diabetic retinopathy by automating diagnostic processes with Artificial Intelligence solutions. The founder, Dr. Michael Abramoff, noticed the lack of efficient tools to diagnose his patients, and started to work on his AI solution in 2010. Today his product is authorized and supported by FDA for use in clinical care.
Headspace
Headspace is a MedTech mobile app supporting mindfulness, balanced life and mental health via promoting meditation as a tool to reduce stress and anxiety. The launch of this app is the result of 10 years experience of Andy Puddicombe, the founder and former Buddhist monk, who created a comprehensive mobile guide for all meditation amateurs. His idea reached $168 mln of funding and more than 2 millions subscribers.
Find Me Cure
Find Me Cure is a MedTech startup strongly supporting medical innovations. They offer the database of medical trials happening worldwide to help patients, researches and health professionals find the curation for specific disease. They've already listed more than 60 000 trials from governmental registries and helped more than 120 000 people globally. They cooperate with the International Alliance of Patient Organizations and other worldwide known medical associations supporting their work.
Cera Care
Cera Care is a MedTech startup offering a comprehensive, modern support for elderly and patients suffering from dementia and progressive illnesses, within respite, live-in or palliative care. They help families to go through difficult diseases of their elder relatives in a professional and caring way. The company strongly contributed to building bridges between healthcare professionals, elder patients and their family members, and raised more than 20 mln British pounds from investors, including David Buttress and Peter Sands. They also established cooperation with NHS organisations and councils, including Dementia Action Alliance. Cera Care was also honoured with awards associated to dealing with dementia, innovations in healthcare and technology.
As you can notice, there's clearly a lot of space for improvements and innovations within healthcare industry. Most of those MedTech startups are based on simple ideas and widely known technologies, but successful adaptation to the specifics of the medical branch helped them to succeed in the long term. Then, if you feel inspired and launching your own MedTech mobile app is already on your mind, give it a try – there are still plenty of needs to fulfill and ideas to develop.
Did you like this content? Make sure to also check out this blog post: 7 best telemedicine apps to follow in 2023
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