The startup coordinates and e-health destination
By Sachin Gaur, Director operations IC
Last year May 24-26, 2017 was big startup event Latitude 59 in Tallinn,Estonia. I attended the event and got a flavor of the startup scene and healthcare sector discussions were held. I aligned my visit to Estonia along with the visit of my meeting with CBHEALTHACCESS delegates, innovative healthcare companies from Finland, Sweden, Estonia and Latvia.
I could witness many startups and meet some friends. At any point in the premises of the conference there were over 1000 people and all engaged about future trends and opportunities. One way to know future is always by observing what problems best startups are engaged in solving. I could witness many biotech (genetics) based startup trying their hands on personalized medicine and new age diagnostics platform. Also, interesting was the cyber security companies.
One cyber security startup from Switzerland, OneVisage, that attracted my attention was working on 3D face scanning as authentication mechanism and looked promising for applications like online banking with your own face as your password. Estonia in general has made great advances in two areas, one that of e-governance including e-health and the other cyber security. Hence, it was no surprise for me to see both kind of startups flocking in conference and building upon the existing good work happening in that country. The other exciting thing to see was the countries collaborating and there were many international visitors including from India. Japanese and Finnish presence was quite visible.
There was also heavy promotion of e-residency program with some exciting announcements about easier account opening with a Finnish provider. It lured me also to try my hands on registering a company and post conference it took me only few minutes with the help of some local friends to register a company! Although, I am yet to make it fully functional, but that was already something for me.
The highlight for me was the healthcare session on the second day, which had a keynote by Nicky Hekster from IBM Watson. Nicky started by asking everyone in the room to standup and asked first those who have been to a hospital in last six months to sit down or someone in their close family. Next, he asked if they knew someone in friends/relatives who have been to the hospital. To my surprise there were only 2-3 people standing in the room which had over hundreds of people. This was a master tactic to drive the point home, that healthcare matters to all.
Followed by the keynote was a panel discussion, which comprised of panelists from USA, Finland, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Estonia. They were healthcare practitioners, investors, incubators, startups and large company representatives. The session was interesting and demonstrated that how international best practices sharing and collaboration is need of the hour cutting across all type of stakeholders. I really enjoyed my two days not just in the conference but also in after parties with loads of intellectual discussions. Look forward being there again next year!
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