Growing Trust in The Future of Health Tech

Although health tech is a relatively young vertical of the Danish startup ecosystem, the existing data predicts a promising future. At Health Tech Hub Copenhagen we have gathered and analysed all available relevant data on the Danish health tech startup ecosystem, and published our first Ecosystem Map in December 2019.

Since then, we closely follow developments in the sector both national and international and see a growing trust in the future of health tech, both in the light of global health challenges like COVID-19, and related to the broad global health and environmental goals.

The Danish health tech startup ecosystem is steadily growing, currently consisting of about 180 startups committed to changing the future of healthcare. Not only are there more and more health tech startups created, but the existing startups experience significant growth in both number of employees and investments. These growth curves resemble both those of other, now hugely successful Danish verticals back in the same phase as health tech is now (like fintech or B2B solutions) and of health tech in other markets that are now ahead of Denmark (like the USA).

Geographically, while health tech startups are overwhelmingly concentrated in and around the capital region, we see more and more companies started in other parts of the country. An important learning here is that health tech startups cluster around large hospitals – in Copenhagen, Odense, Aarhus, Aalborg. Hospital-driven joint innovation and co-creation is an important driver of health tech, and this stresses the importance of the ecosystem working towards seeing more CVR numbers created out of hospitals.

As we are experiencing right now with COVID-19, health is everybody’s business and impacting society as we have not seen for a very long time. We need to speed up the implementation and adoption of health tech solutions, if Denmark is to join the frontrunners of health tech.