Top HealthTech Companies in Europe

According to a report 📊📈📄📉 published by dealroom (a global data platform for intelligence on startups, innovation, high-growth companies, ecosystems and investment strategies in Amsterdam), the European HealthTech companies are now worth €50 billion, and the most valuable European HealthTech companies are:

Oxford Nanopore (@nanopore): is a sequencing company (spun out of the University of Oxford ) valued at around $4,6 billion in London IPO.

Oxford Nanopore is offering a technology to analyse any length of native DNA or RNA, and it's the only sequencing tech company to enable real-time analysis, in fully scalable formats—from pocket to population scale. But Nanopore goes beyond sequencing, since ML learning algorithms can be used to extract unknown biology information hidden in the Nanopore sequencing data.

On the report of a Financial Times article, the pandemic put Nanopore on the map since its patented technology (MinION the world's first portable pocket-sized sequencing device) was used in identifying and tracking the spread of Covid variants in 85 countries, by sequencing about 18% of all coronavirus genomes globally. In fact, Oxford Nanopore made a gross profit of £26.9m in the first half of 2021 and is now competing with Illumina in a $7 billion market for DNA sequencing, dominated so far by Illumina. But since Illumina's devices are too big and too slow, the portable Nanopore’s devices, which are approaching Illumina’s for accuracy apart being also cheaper and quicker, are now used everywhere from country hospitals to city streets, farms, and oceans. For more about MinION:

And just this month (November 2021), Nanopore won a new 36-month contract, worth around $68 million, to provide devices and consumables to G42 Laboratory, which is providing sequencing operations on a large customer project based in the UAE.

wefox (@wefoxHQ): is a health insurance company that has a valuation of $3 billion.

wefox, is a Berlin-based digital insurance company that intends to expand into the US and Asia, while strengthening its presence in its existing markets in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Poland. It was launched in 2015 by CEO Julian Teicke, and founders Fabian Wesemann and Dario Fazlic. wefox is driven by a single purpose: to make people safe and prevent risk by reinventing insurance at scale through technology, and is the parent company of wefox Insurance, which is the in-house regulated insurance carrier.

In this interview, @julian_teicke, co-founder and CEO of wefoxHQ (1st InsurTech in Germany), discusses his plans to revolutionise the insurance industry, with wefox becoming Europe’s number one digital insurer:

Let's move to the next company now.

Exscientia (@exscientiaAI): is a drug discovery AI company (now Nasdaq listed as $EXAI), and valued at $2.9 billion on Nasdaq.

Exscientia is applying AI and big data processing to accelerate drug discovery and development, and is the first company to automate drug design. Their knowledge-driven systems (Centaur AI, as well as AI Pharmatech platforms) design millions of novel, project-specific compounds and pre-assess each for predicted potency, selectivity, ADME and other key criteria. From this, a selection of the best, information-rich compounds are selected for synthesis and assay.

Exscientia has already a lot of partnerships with big pharmas (source), for example:

• in 2019 Exscientia announced a partnership with Roche worth up to €60M,
• in 2019 Exscientia said that it had delivered the first drug candidate through its collaboration with GSK, a potential therapy for chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder. The partnership between GSK and Exscientia dates back to July 2017,
• in 2020 Bayer announced a collaboration agreement with Exscientia to identify and optimise novel lead compounds as potential drug candidates in treating cardiovascular and oncological diseases, with Exscientia receiving up to $266 million (€240 million) in upfront and research payments, as well as near-term and clinical milestones. Finally,
• Exscientia has partnership with Rallybio to discover small-molecule drugs for rare diseases, and with BMS.

Furthermore, Exscientia has just been awarded a @BCCJapan (a UK-Japan business network) British Business Award for Innovation, a recognition of their collaboration with Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma in the application of two of the world’s first AI-designed molecules to enter clinical trials (DSP-0038 for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease psychosis and DSP-1181 to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder).

The next company is a digital care provider.

Babylon (@babylonhealth): is a digital care company valued at $4.2 billion, making it one of 16 "unicorn" companies headquartered in the UK. (Top European telemedicine companies source)

Babylon is on a mission to put an accessible and affordable health service in the hands of every person of earth, using AI technology and medical expertise, by delivering 24/7 access to digital health tools, personalised assessments and remote doctor consultations—all from your phone. The company already has over 4.5 million members and 170 global partners, across Europe, North America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

Enjoy Babbylon's CEO and Founder Ali Parsa in the following video:

Founded in 2013, Babylon's app was initially a sort of an interactive version of WebMD (an American corporation known primarily as an online publisher of news and information pertaining to human health and well-being), where patients used a Q&A function to understand what is wrong with them. By then, Babylon Health has grown to be the fifth-largest medical practice in the UK, providing chat/video support and remote patient monitoring. It claims from surveys that more than 40% of remote consultations helped patients avoid the emergency room or urgent care clinic.

Babylon's AI technology platform, that is offering a symptom checker function, has now the AI Brain tool that can out-diagnose doctors using ML (their new causal algorithm scored over 77%, which was higher than the Babylon doctors that reviewed the same tests). Finally, Babylon's long-term goal is to take full responsibility for a patient’s health from cradle to grave.

Another european digital care company is KRY.

KRY (@KRYcare): is a digital care company, one of Europe's biggest telehealth providers that an investment, led by CPP Investments and Fidelity, valued the seven-year-old firm at $2 billion.

Kry (also known as Livi @LIVI_uk) was founded in 2015, is headquartered in Stockholms Lan, Sweden and offers digital healthcare services that help patients to make active choices about their health in partnership with public and private healthcare professionals. Since it's inception in 2015, Kry/Livi has completed 3 million on-demand video consultations across Europe.

The CEO and co-founder of Kry/Livi @jschildt spoke with @IndexVentures's @sofiadolfe (that helps the most ambitious entrepreneurs turn bold ideas into global businesses), about building a pan European Healthtech Champion at this year’s @StartupGrind:

Let's talk about an insurance tech company now.

Alan (@avec_alan): is a health insurance company that its latest valuation is reported to be $1.7 billion.

Alan, based out of Paris, is the first digital health insurance company in France, with the ambition to revolutionise health insurance, providing an excellent price-quality ratio health plan. All forms of tracking, including that of quotes, invoices and reimbursement can be done on their app, making life easier and more convenient for the user. They offer Alan Map, accessed through the app or online, where the user is invited to discover their nearest doctor's surgery, and are told when it opens to rid the user of any unnecessary time wasted. Moreover, Alan will allow you to talk to a doctor via your telephone wherever you want, whenever you want, furthering their digitalisation of the process.

It now has 155k members, covers 9.4k companies and is aiming to have 1m members by 2023. It made €100m in annual revenue in 2020.

Of course, among the most valuable European HealthTech companies is a psychedelics drug development company.

Compass Pathways Plc (@COMPASSPathway): is a drug discovery company developing a proprietary formulation of Psilocybin, and its current market cap is $1.4 billion.

Compass, is a mental health care company dedicated to accelerating patient access to evidence-based innovation in mental health. Compass is developing its psychedelic therapies, like the COMP360 treatment that is a psilocybin drug administered alongside guided talk therapy, and early studies showed that the combination is highly effective at treating people with treatment resistant depression (TRD). The program is currently in phase 2b of clinical trials. The company was founded in 2016 in Altrincham, Cheshire UK.

George Goldsmith, Chairman, CEO and Co-founder of COMPASS Pathways, said (Tuesday November 9, 2021):

“With the positive topline results from our COMP360 psilocybin therapy phase IIb trial, we are one step closer to potentially providing a much-needed therapeutic option to patients suffering with treatment-resistant depression. At the same time, we are making great progress in broadening our pipeline – we are beginning a phase II COMP360 psilocybin therapy trial for PTSD, and we have acquired a large portfolio of new compounds and IP, working with Matthias Grill PhD. Our goal remains the same - to transform mental health care and bring options to the millions of patients who currently don’t have many.”

For more about investing in psychedelic therapies with Compass Pathways – for depression and anxiety treatment – in this video Compass Pathways President, Chief Business Officer & Co-Founder Lars Wilde talked about his company and the future of Psychedelic medicine:

Doctolib (@doctolib): is a digital care company with a doctor booking app that has $1.1 billion valuation in France.

Founded in 2013, Doctolib is the fastest growing and one of the leading e-health services in Europe providing healthcare professionals with a software solution with a full range of services to help improve the efficiency of their operations. As for patients, they are providing from finding nearby healthcare professionals, to booking/managing appointments 24/7 online, having remote medical consultations via video and receiving a digital prescription in their online account. Doctolib makes money from selling its software services to medical practitioners starting from €129 a month, and is free to use for patients.

Doctolib is now present in France, Germany and Italy and it is increasing revenue by about 50 per cent a year. Again, like with the case of Nanopore, during the pandemic the fast-growing tech start-up Doctolib was thrust into the spotlight when the government in France enlisted its platform to help run the national vaccination campaign (source).

Watch Philippe Vimard CTO & COO that explains how Doctolib has built a company of entrepreneurs with strong human values, ready to transform healthcare for good :

Another AI drug discovery company, among the most valuable European HealthTech companies is BenevolentAi.

BenevolentAi (@benevolent_ai): is an AI drug discovery company, reported to be $1 billion.

BenevolentAI combines advanced AI and ML with cutting edge science to decipher complex disease biology, generate novel insights and discover more effective medicines. With several successful collaborations with leading pharmaceutical organisations (Novartis, AstraZeneca), they are also the only AI-drug discovery company with a clinically validated approach, discovering a leading repurposed drug candidate for COVID-19. BenevolentAI, founded in 2013 is headquartered in London with a research facility in Cambridge (UK) and a further office in New York.

The company, has just nominated a preclinical candidate for a novel ulcerative colitis target, which it expects to enter the clinic in early 2023.

Anne Phelan, Chief Scientific Officer at BenevolentAI, commented:

"Ulcerative colitis is a chronic, lifelong disease that affects 0.2% of the US population alone and 1.6 million patients in the 7 major markets, yet it is poorly served by the standard of care therapies. Our novel preclinical candidate addresses the high unmet need for an oral, safe and efficacious therapy and has demonstrated improved safety and tolerability profile compared with other leading IBD treatments. We are actively using patient-derived molecular descriptors to target patient subgroups that will optimise trial design and further increase our probability of success."

After reviewing the most valuable European HealthTech companies for 2021, let's see now the top investments in the European HealthTech sector for 2021.

Always, according to the same report 📊📈📄📉 published by dealroom investment in the European healthtech 🚑🚨💊📱📲⌚️💻🖥 hit €4.9B in the first half of 2021, with the following top rounds in 2021:

• CMR Surgical, is a Cambridge UK-based global surgical robotics business that has raised $600M Series D, pushing its total funds raised above $1 billion and giving it a $3 billion valuation.
• Exscientia, the clinical stage pharmatech company using AI to design patient-based drugs, with offices in Oxford, Miami, Osaka and Dundee, that has raised $525M Series D. SoftBank Vision Fund 2i led the Series D and was joined by previous round lead investors, Novo Holdings and funds managed by Blackrock.
• KRY, the telehealth service software company in Stockholm that connects clinicians to patients, that has raised $312M Series D .
• Nanopore, the Oxford Nanopore Technologies a next-generation DNA/RNA sequencing technology company, that has raised £195 million ($271 million), Series H.
• Quanta, is a device company in UK with a portable hemodialysis system, that has raised $245M Series D, led by Glenview Capital and Novo Holdings.
• Alan, Europe's first digitally native health insurer in France, that has raised €185M Series D .
• Huma, Huma Therapeutics in London is a digital health platform creating “hospitals at home” for predictive care and research, that has raised $130M Series C.
• CeQur, is a maker of wearable insulin delivery devices in Switzerland, that has raised $115M Series C. And
• Binx Health, also known as Atlas Genetics is a delivering on-demand testing to people where they need it most for improving sexual health and wellness, that has raised $104M Series E.

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Right now, HealthTech is the fastest growing vertical within the healthcare sector and it includes any technology-enabled healthcare product and service that can be delivered or consumed outside of a hospital or physician’s office—one notable exception being hospital and practice management software. In particular, AlbionVC a Health Tech Primer for Europe created a market map, of HealthTech startups in Europe.

Moreover, in order to promote digital transformation in the european HealthCare sector, the Digital Healthcare Act has been adopted in Germany 🇩🇪 in 2019, to support digital health innovation , by offering a €500 incentive for startup video consultations . Germany is also covering prescribed apps, such as Kalmeda (an app for tinnitus care, that combines cognitive-behavioral therapy with medical knowledge transfer, acoustic aids and relaxation exercises) and Velibra (an internet-based treatment program for adults with anxiety disorders) .

Sweden 🇸🇪 is having tele-consultation reimbursed since 2016, with enabling startups such as KRY (booking a video appointment), Min Doktor (meet a doctor online) and Doktor.se (a digital healthcare provider that helps with counselling, booking doctors, distance care, recipes, referrals and more). Sweden has also adopted the integrated electronic health record solutions (EHRs) and e-prescriptions in Sweden’s 21 regions since 2018 .

UK 🇬🇧 is also promoting the adoption of central digital records locator, booking apps and video consultation available through every doctor’s surgery, while the NHS Innovation Accelerator supports exceptional individuals to scale promising innovations across England's NHS with a $330M investment in AI health.

Finally, in France 🇫🇷 KRY (the digital healthcare services that helps patients to make active choices about their health in partnership with public and private healthcare professionals) and Doctolib (the online booking platform and management software provider for doctors in Europe working with 65 000 health practitioners, present in 1 300 health facilities), are both market leaders in French telemedicine. And since 2018 France adopted online diagnosis and treatment, and cross-border treatment with EU doctors tele-consulting patients in France.

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