What LinkedIn's Top Startups List Indicates for the Future of Health Tech
Sehreen Noor Ali
Now: Closing the gap between visionaries & their visibility || Then: Award-winning VC-backed Founder || Always: Medical Needs Mom Turned Pediatric AI Innovator
Today, LinkedIn released its annual Top Startups List, which ranks the top 50 companies across growth, public mindshare, and talent acquisition. Here’s what I think it means for health tech.
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Several health tech companies made the list, such as Plume, Lyra, and Redesign Health. The growth of these startups, coupled with recent funding announcements in different area of health care, indicate the widening opportunity in addressing what was once considered just niche markets, such as maternal health, fertility, gender-affirming hormonal therapy, and mental health.
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This trend will continue as investors unveil the deep markets underserved by healthcare. Already since starting Sleuth in 2020, I’ve noticed an uptick in funding - and interest - in kid’s health, in startups such as Brightline, Hazel Health, and just last week, Cartwheel Care. This growth is not just caused by the havoc of the pandemic, but because of what the pandemic brought into stark light. Other markets that were once (mistakenly) considered niche, like women’s health, chronic health management, and behavioral health, will also grow.
The other trend we’ll see is increasing investment in deep tech. We just have to look at the list of AI-enabled sales startups on the list to see how ubiquitous AI is becoming across industries; the application in healthcare has already been huge and it’s only going to accelerate.?
In health, the application are various and very exciting, so much so that the FDA released its plan on how it might regulate AI-based products in 2021. Some of my favorite examples are using AI for diagnosis (K Health, Ada.com); NLP for understanding patient-derived data; and precision medicine (deepcell), which marries AI with genomics and molecular biology to find the best treatment for an individual.
It’s important to note that the other side of AI’s promise is the real potential for it to exacerbate bias as well. That needs to be well-mitigated and could be a market opportunity in and of itself.