Digital Health and Ireland’s Start-up Boom

Back in May 2012 on The Guardian TechWeek Podcast, John Sculley ex-Apple CEO and an executive with unrivalled standing in Silicon Valley predicted that cloud technology would enable a revolution in the Healthcare industry.

This is a timely development as aging populations in western societies are putting more strain on the health systems in the US and Europe. And as this pressure is going to increase steeply, health managers will need digital products that do more, faster and for less.

The capital is already there for health care digital ideas that meet this demand. An organization with fantastic potential in this field is Dublin based HealthXL. This is the first global mentoring network that supports International Digital Health start-ups. According to HealthXL, global investment in the health industry increased by 46% in 2012. With its dense cluster of Pharma companies and white hot IT start-up scene, Ireland is ideally placed to fully benefit from all of this.

Its Healthies awards, now in its second year, have been covered by Forbes magazine confirming Ireland as a Global Hub in this fast emerging industry.

HealthXL has powerful backing from IBM, Silicon Valley Bank and healthcare giant Novartis among other sponsors. We’ve included their video clip here to tell you all about it.

One of its star alumni is Irish digital health company, Nutritics. Founded in 2011, their platform provides analytical tools for health professionals to process nutrition data. Currently selling into the UK/Ireland market, their star quality was rewarded with second place in the Startup World Cup in Stanford University, Silicon Valley in September of this year.

Pharmapod is another rising star in the Digital Health industry this time coming out of the National Digital Research Centre (NDRC). Founder & CEO at Pharmapod, Leonora O’Brien had her ascendancy in the industry consolidated by winning the European prize at The Global Cartier Women’s Initiative Award in Paris on 17 October this year. Leonora is also a mentor at the HealthXL accelerator.

Pharmapod offers a cloud based service to pharmacists which enables them to record and review all the medication related errors and incidents that happen within their practice. This helps pharmacists to meet their professional and legal obligations as well as maximise patient safety.

ZenDoc, just like our previous two start-ups, uses cloud technology to deliver its service. Based in the Guinness Enterprise Centre, it is a SaaS quality management service that simplifies compliance for the Life and Health Sciences sector. It’s designed to help companies reduce their costs of managing quality, lower the risk of non-compliance and easily access services from quality and regulatory experts.

Regardless of how other areas of the tech start-up scene fare in the middle term, the industry creating digital health products in Ireland and elsewhere is offering real solutions to increasingly acute business problems in the Pharma and Medical sectors. Their ingenuity and enterprise will affect all our lives for the better.

Finally, for those of you who are not overly familiar with what Digital Health can do, here is an overview from Paul Sonnier who is the founder of the Digital Health Group on LinkedIn.