In a world of constant and exponential technological innovation, it’s only natural that the same forces propelling the likes of Apple, Amazon, and Google to the top of the stock market are also working throughout the industries of the world. One of the major sectors to see the start of a major overhaul in the 2010s was the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry – and it’s here that we can expect dramatic innovations on the part of startups in this exciting and life-saving space. Read on to discover just what to look out for in a new world of digital diagnoses and automated health services.
Automating Minor Issues
A boon not just for the medical companies themselves, but also for the consumers, many dozens of healthcare companies are using a multidisciplinary set of teams to draw together knowledge in data science, AI, medicine and psychology to find ways to automate patient care. Across the board, this is one of the most exciting developments in digital healthcare, with ambitious startups taking up the challenge with gusto, with the potential reward of lucrative contracts – as well as potentially thousands of lives saved – as the bonus at the end of their developmental journey.
Pharmaceuticals
Whether it’s because technology is helping us understand chemistry and biology to ever-finer degrees, or because medical scientists have been granted more freedom to experiment with drugs, there can be no doubt that pharmaceutical companies are an excellent investment opportunity for the coming years. Here, you’ll find startups working with the largest companies to establish new techniques to refine and create drugs, as well as automated testing that should, hopefully, see a reduction in the amount of lab testing on animals that is carried out in the future. This is one of the most exciting spaces to watch in medical technology innovation.
Robotic Surgeons
Robot surgeons may have seemed a sci-fi dream a mere few years ago, but they’re already a reality today. The benefits of robotic surgeons are manifested in their ultra-controllable limbs and movements, which means that the most complex keyhole operations can be conducted without damaging the surrounding tissue of the patient. With even the steadiest human hand, there is space for human error – but startups in the medical robotics space insist that these issues can be consigned to the past when they perfect their robotic surgeons.
Digital Diagnoses
There have been several studies from university campuses confirming the inevitable: if you feed an algorithm enough data, and enable it to learn through machine learning and act on instinct through artificial intelligence, it will outperform a human when it comes to diagnosing health problems from patients. This is a truly remarkable breakthrough and may spell the end of the continuous study and the precise knowledge of human doctors, whose experience in diagnosing disease can be unreliable and myopic. With the biggest brains in data analysis and AI collaborating to make these algorithms stronger and ready for mainstream use, you can expect the 2020s to see the rise of the algorithmic doctor.
There you have it: some key rising healthcare startups to keep your eye on, and look forward to, in the weeks and months ahead.