The beating heart of HealthTech, saving lives through innovation
How Innovation is saving lives.
When we think about life saving innovations we often think about equipment like a defibrillator or the invention of vaccines. But Health Tech is a growing and advancing industry that encompasses everything from the EKG’s in your smart watches to the AI being used to detect conditions as early as possible.
The beating heart of healthtech
There is no doubt in saying that AI is at the heart of Health Tech and Health Tech Innovation, we can’t avoid it. In 2024 with a £250 million budget the NHS AI Lab invested over £100 million into AI solutions, through their AI in health and care award they have committed £113 million to accelerate the testing and evaluation of technologies, this has included using AI to improve back office efficiency, smart phone self testing and AI detection for breast cancer.
But healthtech goes beyond the NHS and the UK. At the start of the year at the latest Nuit de la French Tech event a panel discussed the real world use cases demonstrating that AI and digitisation are delivering tangible value from the unprecedented speed of the Covid-19 vaccine development to AI-driven screening for those at risk of Alzheimers.
The future of health tech
In January 2025 the UK government announced an acceleration in tech and AI adoption across the NHS in the form of ‘Humphrey’, a suite of AI tools designed to streamline services, improve data sharing, and reduce reliance on consultants.
The announcement of ‘Humphrey’ comes after the launch of the AI Opportunities Action Plan, already attracting over £14 billion in investment within one week of its launch.
HealthTech is a lucrative industry for investors, with continuing industry growth and the fulfilment that is received from investing into live-saving science. At Climb24 we heard a panel of investors speaking about their experience within the life science sector.
Jordan Dargue, Co-founder of Lifted Ventures spoke about the importance of business founders having scientific experience and being able to show proof of concept.
Andrew Round, Investment Director at Deep Bridge Capital spoke about the importance of the Investor founder relationship. He looks at how he [the investor] will fit into the business over the next 5 to 10 years and more importantly how the relationship is going to work from his ‘would I have a beer with them’ test to how passionate he is about the technology he is investing in.
Healthtech innovation at Climb
ClimbUK is based in Leeds and aims to bring investment to the North. At Climb24 we heard Jordan Dargue speak about how it isn’t just about investing in the North it’s about how we portray the North to other investors and how we can put the area on the map, and that’s what we are aiming to do.
Climb24 brought health tech to the forefront from Better Medicine’s advancing cancer diagnostics with AI to IVF 2.0’s Artificial intelligence assisting the most precious of decisions.
Join us this July at ClimbUK to learn more about the beating heart of healthtech and be at the forefront of innovation.