Nordic Health: New disruptions?

Year 2015 saw a slew of corporations such as Qualcomm, Google, Apple, GE launching their initiatives in health and life sciences. When we were wondering if this momentum in health disruption would last, announcement of Nokia acquiring Withings can only indicate that digital health is the here to stay and big corporations are betting big on it!

Healthcare being a multi-billion dollar in industry is in need of solutions to tackle problems in patient care, wellness, disease management and increasing data management more than ever before. The rise of genetic testing and its accessibility to public has posed a challenge of managing big data and discerning clinically relevant information for the doctors. Many startups are rising to the occasion by solving these problems.

shutterstock_376865011

Of course, dealing with healthcare related solutions has its own set of regulatory challenges, but by taking a leaf out of 23andme’s struggle with FDA approval and Theranos scandal of FDA violations, new entrants can learn from their mistakes and avoid them. Increased funding from government and new initiatives such as President Obama’s personalized medicine initiative and Joe Biden’s cancer moonshot projects have not just increased public participation and enthusiasm for health initiatives but will also help build up investor confidence.

Health and life science disruptions at the Nordics

At our homebase the Nordics, health and life science startups have had some very promising successes in rising investments and growing at a rapid speed such as NetMedi, Blueprint Genetics, MeeDoc among others. To build on the momentum in health and wellness investment sector, Arctic15 and Finnish Health Startup Association HealthSPA have come together to organize the Nordic Health Investment Day on June ,1 with the support of Finnish public agencies Sitra, Tekes, Finpro. With the main goal of bringing startups and investors together under one roof, the first lineup of startups and investors participating in the event looks very promising. Overall we’re expecting close to 100 startups, 500 participants and 50 investors to attend the event.

We have diagnostic based startups Fimmic, a digital web microscope technology based startup replacing the traditional use of microscope for diagnostic purposes and Blueprint Genetics, which specifically deals with not just generating genetic data but providing clinically actionable information for enabling personalized medicine joining the event among others. Also joining from the digital health solutions startups such as CarecodeHeimo and Klinik. Talking about big data, Chino.io, which provides solution for secure storage of health data, will be at NHID as well. These are just few examples – tens of other startups will be there as well and have already signed up!

On the investor front, we are excited to announce our first line up of investors from not just Nordic regions, but abroad as well. Nokia Growth Partners who announced a $300 million fund will be at the event looking for some exciting investment opportunities! We have XLHealth, Inventure, Northcap, Digital Health Ventures, Startup Health and Lifeline Ventures joining us. From the US we have Mosaic ventures and M1 capital joining. This is just the start, and we have more joining us on the D-day!

To bring the best out of the day for both startup’s and investors we have designed specific events such as “grill-room” pitching, deal room with Arctic15’s successful matchmaking initiative to maximize the networking potential of our event. The best time for health and wellness based startups is right now and as the saying goes “strike while the iron’s hot”!

ArcticStartup is one of the leading organisations working with startups and media in Nordic and Baltic region, Finnish Health Startup Association HealthSPA is actively engaging with health & wellness community on a grassroot level for almost four years and is responsible for the organising the biggest health startup festival in the Nordics. This ensures that Nordic Health Investment Day will be fantastic health industry event and not to be missed.

You can buy tickets for the event at http://www.nordichealthinvestmentday.com/

We are fast running out of spaces for demo stands, so book yours today!