The relatively young healthtech sector – 50% of companies were incorporated less than 9 years ago – has experienced strong development over the past few years. It is currently specialising in the following fields:
- digital health
- diagnostics
- health data analytics
- health wearables
The number of companies with a digital focus is constantly increasing. They work on the digitalisation of all aspects of health and the patients’ medical journey and develop smart health products and services centred on personalised and digital medicine.
Turning research expertise into healthtech innovation
The sector benefits from Luxembourg’s research expertise in health and biomedicine, built through considerable investments made over the past decades. The Luxembourg Centre of Systems Biomedicine, which is part of the University of Luxembourg, is very strong in terms of scientific progress and success, and the Luxembourg Institute of Health also has a solid international reputation. In 2021, Luxembourg created a Professorship in Digital Medicine, an interdisciplinary Chair to bring together the evidence generation the digital transformation of healthcare via the tools of health economics, digital, medicine and human competencies.
Systematic measures are now implemented in order to convert the country’s scientific excellence into technological innovation and to stimulate cooperation between researchers, innovative companies and hospitals. One example is a recent dedicated call for public-private R&D projects providing funding adapted for bringing companies, hospitals and public research together to do clinical research and develop new, innovative digital products are fit for purpose. A new call in the same field is in preparation to complete the national value chain in the healthtech sector.
Health technologies hosting and funding opportunities
Recent investments have even seen the opening of dedicated facilities for soft-landing inbound healthtech businesses. The House of Biohealth, a hosting facility with office and lab space for both established companies and start-ups in the fields of digital and laboratory-based health products, hosts around 450 people working in areas such as diagnostics, medical devices and digital health. A health technologies business incubator located at the House of Biohealth in Esch-Belval offers 350 m2 of laboratory space to start-ups and spin-offs during their first 5 years of operation.
The government also recently announced that a future Health And Life science Innovation (HE:AL) Campus will open its doors in 2024. The campus will be dedicated to digital health and personalised medicine, and will primarily target companies active in the fields of medical devices, in vitro diagnostics, and digital health tools and services. It will also be open to R&D, innovation and production activities, as well as to health technologies consulting and services. It will offer infrastructure to healthtech companies that want to set up offices in Luxembourg, thereby contributing to the development of key technologies for the implementation of personalised medicine solutions based on the use of health data enabled through artificial intelligence.
