Startup Nation Venture Panel Healthcare Reimagined

If this Pandemic has taught us anything, it is that nothing is more important than health. Mahatma Gandhi once said, “It is health that is the real wealth, and not pieces of gold and silver.” And yet, they are more related than Gandhi insinuated.


Healthcare innovation, and particularly advances in vaccine development, has been on the forefront of the world stage over the past year. As we begin 2021, it is a good time to look towards the future of digital health, and see what technologies might impact our lives in the years to come. None of that innovation happens without funding, however, which is why the Society for HealthCare Innovation - SHCI brought together Israel's top Healthcare VC's for a discussion on funding for digital health in 2021. Israel is known as the Startup Nation - Israel has the 3rd most companies listed on the Nasdaq, after the U.S. and China, despite having the same population as New Jersey! On January 20th, I moderated a panel with Guy Ezekiel from Pitango, Allen Kamer from Qure, Netalie Nadivi from Triventures, and Amir Blatt from Almeda Ventures .


The panelists addressed the following questions:


1) What do you/your fund view as the biggest focus area in the digital health space in 2021? 

(2) I just joined a company named Eleos as the head growth. Eleos, just for those that don't know, removes administrative tasks from therapists workloads, and provides clinical tools that empower therapists to provide better care. And when I say better care, we've actually been able to prove a 55% reduction in depression symptoms within 6 weeks using Eleos, which is 20% higher than the baseline for evidence based treatment and medication. There isn't really anything like it in the market.  So my question, which some fellow entrepreneurs may share is, when you are bringing a new technology to the market in the digital healthcare space, what GTM strategies have you seen be successful ? Particularly through the lens of payors and providers.


(3) Obviously given Israel’s size, in order to be successful, company’s need to move  beyond Israel's borders pretty quickly. How do you validate business models outside of Israel? 


(4) Over the last five years there has been a growth of corporate interest in Israeli innovation, many have set up shop - so to speak. And generally, there are more investors than ever trying to fund the next big healthcare innovation coming out of Israel. How do you address this challenge/opportunity? 


(5) The impact of COVID transcends the physical harm it has done to millions of people and world economies. In the US and around the world, we are in the midst of a behavioral health crisis. Where do you see the biggest challenges in behavioral health today (i.e. access to care vs. quality of care), and what emerging technologies do you think will play a pivotal role for these new behavioral health startups? 

(6) We are seeing a shift from digital health solutions that are used mainly as a "system of record" to the newcomers which are ‘system of intelligence’ - clinical decision support, AI, etc - where do you see the biggest potential and the main challenges?