Healthtech in Europe sits at an awkward intersection. As an engineer, you see enormous inefficiencies and rich data. As an investor, you hit fragmented reimbursement, local clinical practice and a long tail of niche indications. For a generalist fund, a lot of companies end up in the “great team, wrong fund” bucket.

The capital going into the space is real. Across Europe, digital health funding in 2024 is commonly estimated in the $4-5bn range, up on 2023, with a growing share going into AI-enabled insurers, diagnostics and care platforms. The number of specialist digital health investors has more than doubled since 2021, with well over 200 funds and corporate VCs now active across roughly 4,000 European companies. On top of that, EU-level programmes such as EU4Health, Horizon Europe and the EU Innovation Fund commit several billion euros between 2021 and 2027, with dedicated calls for digital and AI-driven medical technologies.

The structural issue is that many of the most energetic sub-segments (fertility, very narrow diagnostics, procedure-specific tools) are global €1-2bn markets at best, with a lot of the economic upside concentrated in the US. A single-country GTM, or a product that sits on the edge of the care pathway, rarely supports venture-scale outcomes on its own. The models that do work at our scale will combine three things: clear integration into care pathways, a multi-country story (including the US), and a pricing model that lines up with payers and employers, not just out-of-pocket spend.

If you walk through most European hospitals, the pattern is familiar: overworked clinicians, under-used data, and a maze of point solutions that don’t really talk to each other. For years, digital health meant portals, teleconsults and a few scheduling tools layered over the same manual workflows. The default response to gaps in care has been “hire more people”, even as that becomes less realistic every year.

The numbers are uncomfortable. The WHO expects a shortfall of around 4.1 million healthcare workers in the EU by 2030, on top of at least 10 million globally. At the same time, Europe has become one of the most dynamic digital health markets in the world: funding reached roughly $4.8 billion in 2024, up more than 25% year-on-year, and around a quarter of global digital health capital now lands in the region. A growing share of that money is going into AI-enabled workflow, triage and remote monitoring rather than pure consumer wellness. The EU is also investing directly in the workforce side: initiatives like the €12m Susa project aim to train thousands of graduates and mid-career professionals in using AI and digital tools safely in clinical practice.

Taken together, this points in a pretty clear direction: we are not going to staff our way out of the gap. We have to rewire the system so clinician time is protected, mundane tasks are automated, and more care is safely delivered at home or in the community with proper oversight.