Top HealthTech Startups: Innovation Driving the Future of Healthcare

The last few years, fueled by COVID-19, marked a strong growth for the healthtech startups. COVID gave the healthcare industry a much-needed boost, both in terms of funding and the elevated strategic significance of the industry. During the COVID years, funding peaked at $45 bn in 2021 and 23.3 bn in 2022. Even though the immediate impact of the COVID-19 effect is officially over, its momentum remains strong, but primarily for startups. According to Rock Health, the key opinion on driving the funding trends in the healthtech industry is: 

“Investors are betting on younger companies, some of which are free from the valuation baggage of 2020-2022 fundraising.”

Their report on funding in the US alone is shown below.

As such, Series A and B funding is much preferred over Series C and D. So, early-stage healthtech startups with a proven concept and some traction stand a solid chance of sourcing early funding. To be precise, more than half of the funding rounds in 2024 went to startups seeking Series A and B seed funding.

Moreover, technology plays a significant role in healthtech startups’ success. Particularly, 37% of startups that received funding in 2024 utilized AI as their core technology. According to Statista, this percentage is 42% worldwide. AI has firmly ingrained itself in the healthtech landscape within the last decade, as shown in the figure below.

All in all, the landscape for healthtech startups is favorable to those choosing the MVP development path, with its focus on leanness and data-informed decision-making.

Why HealthTech is Hot in 2025: Key Market Forces for HealthTech startups

A critical demographic issue that creates strong and increasing demand for healthcare services worldwide is the aging population. In particular, the 2025 World Economic Forum forecasts that in just 5 years, every 1 out of 6 people will be 60+. Alongside this, it reports an 11 million health worker shortage by 2030. Surely, on the one side, it is great that as the quality of living and healthcare are improving, people’s lifespans are increasing. However, healthcare systems are not ready to meet the demand for elder care, age-related conditions, and chronic diseases.

Remote care is one more trend that will continue its impressive growth. According to the data, this trend has picked up its pace due to the large adoption of telemedicine and virtual-ICU, as shown below. An aging population and an increase in chronic diseases are key drivers of the rapid remote care development. They allow patients to avoid spending time and money on commuting to the hospitals and spare them from waiting in long lines upon arrival. 

AI is a leading technology that investors value in startups for a reason. Recent medical news present articles where AI has caused several practical breakthroughs in the medical field. For instance, researchers managed to train AI to detect lung cancer with an unseen-before level of precision. Nature Genetics published an article about AI achievements in detecting autism risk in uncharted DNA. In addition, there is news about developing an AI-enabled wearable that can detect a dangerous heart condition, which was extremely difficult to detect even in a clinical environment. With these breakthroughs, AI creates new market opportunities. In these cases, it does not replace the workers, but aids and adds to the existing healthcare services, widening the market.

Top 10 HealthTech Startups

The research article reports on 97 healthtech startups that have achieved unicorn status. Their names are shown below and divided into three broader categories: digital health, med-tech, and biotech. 

Here, we focus on a diverse selection of emerging young startups that showcase an evolving healthcare landscape. They range from clinical notetaking to healthcare BNPL to telehealth and wellness marketplaces. 

Abridge

Abridge is a healthtech startup that utilizes generative AI for clinical conversations. The case study indicates that it decreases cognitive load on doctors by 78%. Doctors praise the tool for allowing them not to have to sit and type at the computer during the consultation, but to actually have a genuine human contact with the patient.

PayZen

PayZen is a healthcare BNPL (buy now, pay later) finance startup that utilizes AI to determine the best payment plans. This startup makes healthcare more affordable for patients as they can say ‘yes’ to the treatment or procedure they could not otherwise pay for in a single payment. This, in turn, increases revenues for healthcare providers by 30%.

Chapter

Chapter is a digital healthcare startup that helps in navigating Medicare. They help patients save money and get the most value out of their Medicare plans. The startup earns money by getting a percentage from insurance companies.

Fresha

Fresha is a wellness marketplace for the beauty and wellness industry. It provides an extremely user-friendly platform and a business model without monthly fees, focusing on charging a fee when businesses get clients.

AlTibi

AlTibi is a traditional telehealth digital platform in the Arab world. It made a difference with its hyper-localization and successfully navigating the cultural landscape to achieve an industry-leader position. It offers text-based advice in addition to audio and video consultations, as well as hosts millions of medical articles in Arabic. 

Spark Advisors

Spark Advisors, unlike Chapter, works in a B2B mode with Medicare. Its platform helps agencies and insurance brokers with CRM, improving their productivity. They make money by charging subscriptions.

Iodine Software

Iodine Software, like Spark Advisors, is a B2B business that improves productivity but for hospitals directly. They help not only to increase the efficiency of medical documentation queries but also ensure compliance.

Calm

Calm is an extremely successful example of a wellness healthtech app that provides meditation and sleep stories. The company focuses on user experiences while also using advanced technologies like AI/ML for personalization, AI for voice cloning, and VR for immersive environments.

Alma

Alma engages in the field of mental health as it strives to improve access to specialists. It maintains a directory of specialists and matches them to clients based on insurance, conditions to treat, and whether a specialist takes on new clients.

Pearl Health

While Abridge helps to take notes during consultation, Pearl Health helps primary care physicians to assess potential risks based on the patient’s history to take a proactive approach and avoid costly procedures, ER visits, or worsening conditions. This startup operates in a value-based medicine, which works as a percentage of a saved budget by a physician from improving the designated population’s health.

Trends We’re Seeing in 2025: AI, Wearables, Telehealth, Data Platforms

AI in HealthTech Startups

AI is a key technology across various healthcare services, such as medical imaging, personalized medicine, preventive medicine, and so on. These fields will grow due to key market forces, and, as such, AI utilization will spread. In fact, the market size of AI in healthcare was $16.3 billion in 2022. The projection is for it to grow to $173.55 billion in 2029. The cumulative AI market size growth in healthcare will be around 964% between 2022 and 2029. Annual growth (CAGR) is 40.2%.

The infromation above demostrates vesatiles applications of AI. It is instrumental in improving productivity, like Abridge, or preparing personalized payment plans to improve access to healthcare, like PayZen. AI can be effectively used in diagnostics like AI for lung cancer or patient risk assessment like Pearl Health to prevent serious and, ultimately, expensive health consequences.

Wearables

According to Statista, the healthcare wearables market in 2023 amounted to $25 billion. The forecast is for it to grow to $76 billion by 2029. It represents a cumulative growth of 204% between 2023 and 2029. Compared to AI trend growth rates, the slower growth can be mainly attributed to the more stringent regulation of medical devices and their hardware nature. However, this trend will still grow, especially in connection with remote patient care. Wearables are a cornerstone of real-time, continuous monitoring data. Wearables in wellness are also a solid trend. Since wellness wearables can make do without FDA clearance, they grow faster than those devices meant for clinical use. Healthcare wearables are tightly linked to analytics, and even wellness wearables can have an immense impact on users’ health outcomes.

Telehealth

COVID has had the most impact on the telehealth industry. Once COVID passed, analytics forecasted the return to in-person visits, but 80% of doctors kept providing telehealth services. After the COVID boom, the industry keeps on growing with an 11.83% rate.

During COVID, not only were virtual visits a much safer option, but authorities granted it regulatory acceptance. 

• PPO and ACA insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, and other insurers started reimbursing for telehealth consultations. 
• Prescription issuance and connected procedures were adopted for telehealth consultation at the same level as for an in-person consultation. 

Seeing the benefits telehealth brought, such as improved access, reduced costs, and better convenience for patients, the trend is only growing. However, to fully provide the benefits of in-person consultation online, it requires more ingenuity in applying advanced technology. 

In addition, COVID impacts also extended into appreciation for mental health. 92% of Americans acknowledged the need for mental health support, with 60% becoming open to telehealth for receiving it.

Data platforms and HealthTech Startups

Healthcare is notorious for having loads of data, but it is fragmented and suffers from poor quality of insight. In addition, with the boom in wearables, AI and ML, the scale of generating data has significantly intensified. Figure below indicates the growth of analytics market in the healthcare field along with the rise of data.

Data platforms have emerged as a new powerful trend to solve the following challenges:

• structuring data and ensuring high-quality data for medical AI/ML purposes;
• Interoperability standards to synchronize data exchange between hospitals, ERs, private practices, etc.;
• scalable cloud-based solutions for data storage and processing;
• providing data for value-based medicine, meaning benchmarking data against longitudinal studies for cost and efficiency.

Some of the emerging solutions have 4 broad categories:

• data platforms for clinical exchange, such as Health Gorilla or Particle Health;
• research-qualified real-world datasets such as Tempus or OM1;
• AI-powered medical data analytics platforms such as Truveta and Lifebit;
• personal (consumer) data platforms such as genomic, wearables, EHR, and so on, like 23andMe or Healthie.

Previously, we mentioned some of these startups like Tempus and 23andMe in our article “Transforming industries: top 5 healthcare startups“.

Opportunities for New HealthTech Startups: Underserved Problems, Overlooked Niches

HealthTech startups primarily work in four directions:

• Utilizing advanced technologies – AI, ML, VR – for better accuracy and efficiency;
• Blockchain for securely exchanging data;
• Using AI and ML to deliver personalized, tailored care.

Mostly, healthtech startups strive to optimize costs and improve access to healthcare for underserved population groups. 

Joanne Chen from Foundation Capital says: 

“Senior healthcare technology is an overlooked market opportunity….  it’s tough to identify a single unicorn in VC-backed senior health tech, a segment we believe is ripe for innovation and growth.”

Underserved populations are the elder population and children, people with chronic diseases, people in rural areas, and historically stigmatized groups.

For instance, femtech and men tech are two stigmatized overlooked niches in which demand is yet to be met. It is no secret that many diseases and clinical trials prioritize men by default, stating that women’s hormonal makeup might undermine research results (though, there were also concerns for women’s fertility as a result of trials). However, due to the very same concerns, female bodies respond differently to standard treatments and, thus, require an adapted approach. It extends to wellness too, as it leads to differences in training regimen and recommended activity levels. In terms of mentech, there have always been issues about men’s health which are still not openly talked about. It requires a personalized approach, free from any stigma. Femtech and men tech represent a growing niche in consumerized healthtech and the DTC (direct-to-consumer) business model. 

How You are launched helps: MVPs, scalable healthcare apps for HealthTech startups

Market forces and VCs’ focus on young startups signal the need to develop lean healthtech startups. If there is one thing about healthcare that everyone agrees on, it is that it is filled with problems to be solved. They abound and the majority of them are of a pressing nature. All stakeholders are eager to see them solved with quality healthtech startups. You are launched is skilled at creating valuable digital products flexibly and accounting for the needs of a variety of stakeholders.

You are launched has proven expertise in launching successful startups following a carefully thought-out agile methodology. Most efficient approaches prioritize early validations and idea testing in a cost-efficient manner and ensuring high-quality insight. Especially for healthtech startups, whose development might often require cooperation with clinicians and regulatory compliance, MVP development tools offer much-needed confidence to minimize the investment risk. 

In addition, most healthtech startups solve problems that address issues at scale: an aging population, a growing number of chronic diseases, and catering individually to wide user bases. You are launched builds healthcare app development by applying the globally recognized engineering best practices in app development that focus on scalability, modularity, and extensibility. 

FAQ: HealthTech Startups and Market Trends in 2025