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The COVID-19 pandemic has brought public health to the forefront of global priorities, highlighting the critical role of medical technology—a sector that merges health and technology and is rapidly expanding. In Spain, the healthtech industry has grown by 34% since 2012, yet challenges remain, including economic uncertainty, limited support, and high dependence on foreign technology. The Spanish Federation of Health Technology Companies (Fenin) emphasizes the need for increased public backing, streamlined bureaucracy, and enhanced R&D and digitalization initiatives to strengthen the domestic healthtech sector and boost Spain’s international reputation in this field.
Globally, medical technology is at a pivotal moment, driven by collaboration among healthcare professionals, researchers, and industry players. Countries like the UK are incorporating healthtech into national health strategies to leverage digital innovation in healthcare. The sector encompasses diverse innovations—from startups like Spain’s Hearts Radiant and Portugal’s Knokcare, which develop apps for elderly care and telemedicine, to companies like Insulclock, offering integrated diabetes management systems. Major tech giants such as Google and Apple are also advancing healthtech by creating AI-driven health analysis tools and integrating health services into everyday devices, making healthcare more accessible and personalized. This dynamic environment signals a promising future for medical technology in enhancing patient diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring worldwide.
The latest advances in medical technology attack two clear fronts: longevity and quality of life in our later years.
The shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic is long and one of its many legacies is that of placing public health at the centre of the debate and our priorities. If we combine health with technology – another of the pillars of the “new normal” or post-pandemic life – the result is medical technology, an expanding sector with a long way to go.
Since 2012, the total number of companies dedicated to healthtech in Spain has grown by 34%, according to figures from Fenin, the Spanish Federation of Health Technology Companies, which has just presented a report in which it analyzes in depth the situation and challenges of this industry for the medium term.
“We have been warning for years that this sector is essential for the health and economy of our country. But, despite this, economic uncertainty and the lack of support and tax advantages ended up strangling the viability of our industrial fabric, giving rise to a very high dependence on the outside, a fact that the COVID-19 pandemic has clearly highlighted,” explains Margarita Alfonsel, secretary general of Fenin, in the aforementioned report.
Among the federation’s proposals to promote medical technology in the Spanish market and turn it into a vector of growth is the increase in public support for internationalization, the reduction of bureaucratic procedures or the expansion of support programs in the field of R+D+i and digitalization. All with the aim of “improving the ‘Spain brand’ of health technology”.
A booming sector on the international map
The race to excel in the field of medical technology is an international issue. “Healthtech is at an inflection point, due in large part to the convergence between the ambitions of doctors, researchers and the commercial sector, with a degree of central oversight and commitment never seen before,” stresses this academic article published in the journal Future Medicine.
It also highlights how the NHS (the British national health system) has included it in its development plan for the medium term, which “shows an unprecedented desire to harness the promise of digital in healthcare“.
The development of medical technology opens up a wide range of possibilities in diagnosis, treatment and monitoring of patients, being key, for example, in the detection of rare diseases.
From startups to big tech
In the field of healthtech, the proposals developed by large technology companies coexist with startups such as Hearts Radiant, a Spanish start-up company specialising in increasing life expectancy while maintaining good health. It has developed solutions such as Rosita, an app to improve the physical condition of the elderly, and has seduced capital: at the beginning of this year it opened a round of financing to raise between 3 and 5 million euros.
Telemedicine is another area of health technology development. In this segment we find proposals such as the Portuguese Knokcare, a user-friendly platform designed to connect patients and doctors. In Spain, the Barcelona-based Human IT Care offers comprehensive solutions: from home care services, options for researchers and others for hospitals or clinical centers.
Healthtech also seeks to make life easier for those living with various diseases: Insulclock, with its own software and hardware, is a complete diabetes management and control system. It groups all the patient’s data in the same virtual space, monitors their evolution and even generates reports that the user can share with their doctor in real time.
And what about the big companies? Google and Apple are not far behind. The former is developing, through
