A stronger focus on femtech and innovative AI-powered wearables are just some of what we can expect from medtech moving forward.
Ireland has a booming medtech industry. The country exports around €15bn worth of medtech products annually to more than 100 international destinations.
It is also home to 14 of the top 15 medtech companies worldwide, while employing more than 50,000 people in the sector – making Ireland the largest per capita employer of medical device professionals in Europe.
With Irish innovations in medtech increasingly making it to the global stage, SiliconRepublic.com has put together a list of what experts predict the industry is in for this year and onwards.
AI-powered care
Artificial intelligence-enabled healthcare should no longer comes as a surprise. The technology has provably demonstrated its value in various sub sectors in the industry, from research and drug development, acting as mental health support for people to helping patients understand their reports and giving clinicians easily accessible medical data.
Last year, the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital launched the Centre for AI and Digital Health to develop AI solutions to improve and speed up patient care.
Expect the trend to continue, says Irish Medtech, the Ibec group that represents the country’s medtech sector. It predicts AI-enabled devices and robotics, connected and virtual care models and data to become strong value drivers as AI in healthcare goes from being valued at $26.57bn in 2024 to more than $500bn by 2033.
Smarter wearables
Wearables have become a mainstay in our lives since the mid 2010s, with the likes of the Apple Watches, Oura rings and Fitbits making tracking key health vitals easy.
In recent years, newer, more niche wearables are attempting to target more than just our basic health vitals.
Take, for example, a breastfeeding monitor from Coroflo which won a number of awards at this year’s CES, or a head injury detector for sports people by Sports Impact Technologies – both of which also happen to be Irish start-ups.
While Petal – also a CES showcase this year – is a health tracker that sits inside a user’s bra. It uses bioelectrical impedance analysis to measure body mass index, breathing, heart rate with an additional promise of assessing breast tissue.
While such technology already uses AI, experts also expect remote care, such as smart insulin pumps and wearable ECG monitoring patches to assist healthcare specialists in offering care without patients needing to visit their practitioner in person.
AI-powered administration
Llyod Price, a partner at Nelson Advisors predicts a “widespread” adoption of ambient voice technologies and AI scribes in European clinical settings with the aim of reducing administrative burden on healthcare staff.
Examples of such use cases include Amethyst Care, the Trinity College Dublin-based start-up behind an AI-powered voice assistant for people with mobility issues.
“This trend will be tightly regulated by the EU AI Act and national health service guidelines to ensure safety, data privacy, and patient consent are managed transparently,” Price says.
Last year, SiliconRepublic.com spoke to US-based urologist Dr David Shusterman, who said, “Healthcare is going to be revolutionised by it [AI], whether doctors like it or not, because it becomes more economical to run an office.”
Meanwhile, InsTech.ie also expects the insurance sector to onboard more AI into their workflows. It finds that more than 92pc of Irish insurance technology providers expect AI to underpin their next phase of growth, reinforcing Ireland’s position at the intersection of insurance, data, and advanced analytics.
Menopause, a huge opportunity
By 2030, more than 1bn people globally will be experience perimenopause or menopause. This demographic, often at the height of the careers and earning power are historically underserved, as menopause itself remains are less researched area.
A growing number of start-ups are utilising the opportunity, say experts. Just take Irish femtech success Peri, for example. Peri is behind a small wearable that sticks to your torso to track perimenopausal symptoms, including anxiety, menstrual changes and sleep disturbances.
The wearable tracker comes alongside an app that offers AI-powered insights to help users understand their symptoms. Peri won the Best Wellness Tech category at this year’s CES.
Adding to it, Emily Greenberg, the president and co-founder of Joy explains that women’s health innovation will move toward actual end-to-end solutions.
“You’ll see more personalised tools for women’s health concerns, especially postpartum care, where both physical recovery and mental health have long been underserved,” Greenberg said.
“These tools will adapt to a person’s stage of life, daily realities, and symptoms rather than forcing everyone into the same path.”
Compliance-driven M&As
European health-tech market is poised for “a robust, albeit structurally transformed” resurgence in capital deployment and mergers and acquisitions, says Nelson Advisors. EU regulations will cause harm to firms that lack capital to check all compliance boxes.
The medtech M&A specialist is seeing a trend of “compliance driven M&A(s)” where large firms acquire smaller competitors not just for its technology, but to secure regulatory approvals that serve as financial assets themselves.
It adds that US VCs are increasingly active in Europe, taking advantage of European innovation in robotics and AI before these companies grow to reach similar valuations as their US counterparts.
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