February 18, 2021 saw an event focused on protection of startups in Digital Health and preventive medicine. The event was organized by the venture studio LongLifeLab Ventures.
The founders of startups presented their business ideas to an expert jury. The purpose of this event was to search for promising investment projects, therefore the jury was composed of businessmen having extensive experience in both entrepreneurship and investments:
· Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov, strategic marketing and promotion specialist, consultant and businessman, ex-director of strategy and marketing at Internet Initiatives Development Fund (FRII),
· Vladimir Khristenko, President of NANOLEK biopharmaceutical company, business angel,
· Anton Gopka, venture capitalist and businessman, co-founder and general partner of ATEM Capital, a management company.
The projects unveiled before the guests and experts included an AI-based service for diagnosing ENT patients with 95 percent accuracy; a project on the methodology of customer support and digital services that help customers manage their health online; a platform for remote personal and group training.
Vladimir Khristenko also held a presentation at the event and told the guests about the structure of DIGITAL HEALTH. He dwelled on digital technologies that the pharmaceutical industry considers the most promising. Such technologies includes various vehicles (drones, self-driving cars), a blockchain (medical cards / medical history sheets, supply chain drugs, clinical trials), AR / VR (genome sequencing, genome editing, immuno-oncology, gene therapy), artificial intelligence (early development, diagnostics, patient monitoring), 3D printing (surgical instruments, devices, biomaterials), etc.
The digital healthcare investment market as a whole (including venture capital funding, debt, and public offerings) doubled in 2020. This sector is expected to grow to USD 38 billion by 2025. In 2020, total investments in the industry, including venture capital financing and public offerings, amount to USD 21.6 billion (+103% growth by 2019).
Vladimir Khristenko: “The total investments in the digital health market in 2020 amounted to USD 22 billion in 600+ transactions from 900+ investors, 150 startups were granted funding. Demand for telemedicine has become the main growth driver: 41% of startups that received investments in 2020 offer solutions for remote access to medical services.
The COVID-19 pandemic made of course a significant contribution to the dynamics, which increased demand for remote patient management, monitoring and diagnostics services. The industry experts believe that two areas have the greatest technological potential in the years to come: artificial intelligence and big data”.