One of the most interesting industries from a startup point-of-view is the health care industry.
Before the pandemic hit it was widely recognized that there are a lot of costly, structural issues afoot in the healthcare industry that technology can provide better and more cost efficient solutions for, but nonetheless newcomer struggled to really get inside the conservative system.
Covid-19 changed a lot of that for the sheer reason that suddenly the demand for telemedicine solutions and remote care skyrocketed. This meant that some of the old cultural barriers became if not irrelevant then at the very least less of a pain to startups.
I guess you could say that in a sense, digital health startups got their Covid-19 ‘vaccines’ early in terms of increased demand and opportunity to succeed in the market.
For startups operating in this space this is of course great news. And you could be forgiven for suggesting that we’re on the brink of a golden age for digital health to upend, uproot and improve our healthcare sector.
And you would probably be right. Because startups are not the only ones flocking to the health care sector to deliver new valuable solutions.
Big tech are there as well. Amazon is going in strong, and the same can be said about Google, Microsoft and Apple. And they have very good reasons to.
Forget for a second the market opportunity in itself. Big tech simply has to look this way. Why? Because the health care sector is among a very small group of sectors left, where big tech can drive the kind of top line growth they need to in order to sustain their hefty valuations.
Thus it is not as much an opportunity as a necessity for them to be in this space. And they need to win it.
This is not to say that startups shouldn’t look towards bringing new, exciting and value-driving digital health services and solutions to market. Of course they should. No doubt about it. They just need to be acutely aware that the battle for the market is going to be brutal, and that they are up against all the giants.
Realizing this before diving in and having the right frame of mind to take the competition on can make all the difference between success and failure.
No matter what it will be a super interesting space to watch.
(Photo: Pixabay.com)