Where is health tech headed in 2025?

Author

Lauren Curtis
December 04, 2024

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Hey Health Techies!

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving! Jumping in this week with some 2025 predictions.

How does now compare to startup performance of the past?

According to the Center for American Progress, there are more startups being created than ever before. So it makes sense that we feel like we hear about more failures than we used to.

What happens when startups fail?

Well aside from the sometimes very public layoff announcements, a few things happen. In healthcare, patients are often left with little to no continuity of care and are forced to chase down data and records that may have become all but unaccessible overnight. We need to do better in this area.

Something else that happens is that company assets can be auctioned off. Take the 2023 sale of Pear Therapeutics’s assets. The company had gone public in a $1.6 billion SPAC deal, but in the end its patents and apps were split between 4 bidders at auction for a mere $6 million. These bidderes were other companies interested in purchasing the IP to add to their own company assets.

And on a more optimistic note, something else positive can happen as well. People who worked at the company spread out and go elsewhere, taking their knowledge and learnings. And if you’ll remember two weeks ago, I wrote about the shutting down of primary care innovator Forward Health. It turns out that the founder behind the company is already working on his next venture. Unclear if it is in healthcare.

🏃🏻 Speed will matter

Speed is a tricky thing in healthcare. If things move too fast, without proper oversight or protocol, someone could get hurt. If things move too slow, people can get worse or even die waiting for the solution or cure.

In tech, speed wins a lot more times than it loses. And in 2025 we will continue to see AI companies racing to see who can build the fastest in this vast space with so much possibility. But it won’t be just about building. It’ll be about speed to market and speed of mass distribution as well.

💰 Money talks

The downfall of most companies that fail is an inability to reach or maintain profitability. In the past VC funded startups have been able to live off of funding for longer stretches and go back for more when needed but more than ever investors are looking for a clear path to profitability in order to be willing to keep the money flowing. It’ll be those startups that can figure out their successful revenue model early that will win in the coming years. In healthcare, that just happens to be exceedingly hard due to our insurance model and reimbursement structures.

The ones that get these things right will win, and I can’t wait to see where we are this time next year.

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Until next time,

Lauren

P.S. A big thank you to all that participated in the Black Friday promotion. I am so excited to work with those of you who hopped into Health Tech Success or a coaching session. And if it wasn’t the right time for you, that’s ok. Big things are coming in 2025.