Investing in Australian Digital Health Startups: New Syndicate for Doctors

How can we help doctors invest in burgeoning health tech and digital health companies? Amandeep Hansra, Lead Investor & Co-Founder of Medical Angels has an approach: build a network of 19,000 doctors, get them familiar with testing digital health tech, then arm those who are interested in backing digital health startups a way to make investments as a syndicate.

A general practitioner herself, Amandeep started the larger network five years ago to bring together like-minded, digital-health-curious docs who wanted to play a more active role in designing the care delivery models of the future. Now, 700 of those clinicians are part of an investment syndicate that is not only funding digital health startups, but is delivering strategic advice, helping refine business models, and providing a broad range of key specialty medicine input to the entrepreneurs they choose to back. The skills gap that Medical Angels is filling in terms of healthcare and health tech expertise is largely missing in Australian venture funds, explains Amandeep, as there are no specific digital health funds. Her group is filling that role and then some.

We chat through the latest on digital health investments in Australia including what’s hot and what’s not, how valuations have reset (spoiler: Amandeep believes they’ve been halved since the boom year of the pandemic), and the opportunity that lies ahead for healthcare startups as there are “still really good deals to be done.” The ultimate ecosystem-builder is not done there either – we get the latest on a NEW international network that Amandeep is working on expanding in Australia that helps teach doctors with designs on founding startups how to become entrepreneurs.

Filmed at MedInfo 2023 in Sydney, Australia, July 2023, with special thanks to the Australasian Institute of Digital Health.

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Jess DaMassa chats it up with the ‘who’s who’ of the health tech and healthcare innovation set on 'WTF Health - What's the Future, Health?' Catch 100's of interviews with leading healthcare technology startups and the VC investors, health insurance companies, big pharma co's, and hospital systems helping bring their new ideas into the healthcare establishment. From AI and Big Data to digital health, virtual care, telehealth, digital therapeutics, payment model innovation, and investing, Jessica helps you spot the trends and figure out what’s next.

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