New Nordics Health Innovation Demo Day 2023 brought together investors, startups and health ecosystem players from the New Nordics region to hear the pitches of fourteen promising HealthTech startups. The jury awarded Scellex (FIN) as overall winner, SpeakTX (EST) as Best Team category winner and JodaCare (NOR) as Best Market Knowledge category winner and praised the high quality of the pitching companies. 

On 14th of February, 2023, Health Founders together with Health Incubator Helsinki and DigitalWell Ventures had the pleasure to welcome health innovation enthusiasts at New Nordics Health Innovation Demo Day – first largest health technology demo day in the New Nordics region.

In this online event, 14 promising healthtech startups from Estonia, Finland, Sweden and Norway showcased their groundbreaking solutions to a wide global public of investors, healthcare field experts and ecosystem partners:

EMMA, Essence, SpeakTX, attained.ai and forYou from Health Founders accelerator, NADMED, Fepod, SCellex, Hoivita and Sartar Therapeutics from Health Incubator Helsinki and PhysAct, CanEat, JodaCare and Mood Social from DigitalWell Ventures.

Fourteen companies were divided into two pitching sessions: ‘Digital Solutions’ and ‘Devices’, where each startup had to present their solution with a 3 min pitch, followed by a 5 min Q&A session.

“Every year the event has become bigger and bigger. This means more visibility for the startups and more selection for investors. We are truly moving towards building a stronger New Nordic healthtech ecosystem. I hope that next year we can cover new territories again,” said Erki Mölder, Founding Partner of Health Founders.

The Jury of the demo day was formed of health technology and healthcare field top-tier experts: Tõnu Esko – Venture Partner at Specialist VC and a Professor of Human Genomics at University of Tartu, Meri Helleranta – Partner at Courage Ventures Funds, David Holm Glad – Founder & chairman at Xplorico, Tetiana Siianko Eriksson – Program manager at DigitalWell Incubator and Heikki E Rautajoki – Business Angel and Co-founder & chairman at MedicubeX Ltd.

Overall Winner SCellex

Scellex, pitched by CEO Päivi Saavalainen, develops a lab method and research tool for spatial single cell sequencing directly from tissues and cells.

“SCellex team has got wonderful continuous support, training and facilities from the Health Incubator Helsinki program for the past years. We were extremely happy and honoured for being selected as the Overall Winner of this tough competition. It proves that the spatial omics is an important, hot market and focus area at the moment, and gives us valuable visibility and a great opportunity to visit the Latitude59 event this spring,” said Päivi Saavalainen, CEO of SCellex.

Best Team category Winner SpeakTX

SpeakTX, pitched by Co-founder & CEO Birgit Krieger, is a digital speech therapy platform that improves patient experience and empowers therapists.

“We are thrilled to have recently completed the Health Founders accelerator program. Through 8 months of intense workshops and mentorship sessions, we gained valuable knowledge that has already helped us elevate our business. Furthermore, we are honoured to have won the Best Team category, which serves as a testament to the hard work and dedication of our entire team. It is incredibly motivating to receive recognition for our efforts, and we are more motivated than ever to continue to disrupt and transform the field of speech therapy,” said Birgit Krieger, Co-Founder & CEO of SpeakTX.

Best Market Knowledge category Winner Jodacare

Jodacare, pitched by Kristil Erla Håland, is a digital communication platform for service recipients, relatives and healthcare personnel. The service is particularly suitable for nursing homes, care homes and home care.

“We are so happy to be recognized for helping patients, relatives, and health personnel connect and share useful daily information. Also, helping home care nurses provide advanced wound care for elderly diabetes patients with difficult-to-heal wounds. Our next goal is to scale our solutions to the other Nordic and Baltic countries and to make sure patients receive the best care with our solutions,” said Kristil Erla Håland, CEO of JodaCare.

Congratulations to the companies for their hard work and persistence in creating these valuable healthtech solutions in order to ease and prevent the healthcare burden and wishing the best of luck to all the rest of the amazing startups in their following journeys.

“First, we would like to thank Darja and the Health Founders team for pulling the event together also this year. We are glad to see that the event’s scope has grown to include Sweden and Norway. Needless to say, the quality of the companies that gave their pitch was excellent. A big thank you to the companies, investors and general public that joined the event, as well as to sponsors and judges who evaluated and selected the winning teams,” said Christian Lardot, Incubator Lead at Health Incubator Helsinki.

The winners awards to startups were presented by Latitude59, Radical Health Festival Helsinki and Oslo Big Data Day 2023.

Huge thank you to our jury members for their time and expertise, our sponsors as well as to everyone who joined this event with their curiosity and support.

“We at DigitalWell Ventures are honoured to support the Nordic & Baltic digital health tech startups to scale their impact and to reach wider global markets together with the amazing teams at Health Incubator Helsinki and Health Founders. Congratulations to all the innovative healthtech startups who participated in the New Nordics Health Innovation Demo Day. Your groundbreaking solutions will play a vital role in easing the healthcare burden and improving patient experience,” said Stefan Skoglund, CEO of DigitalWell Ventures accelerator.

The event was organised by Health Founders, Health Incubator Helsinki and DigitalWell Ventures and was a sequel to a successful first Demo Day in January 2021 that brought together over 80 investors, startups and ecosystem partners and grew into a New Nordics region Demo Day.

About Health Founders
Health Founders is the first health economy accelerator in the Baltics serving as a launchpad for those who want to build the future of health. Health Founders main goal is to help startups with investor readiness and give exceptional founders the needed tools and support to transform their breakthrough ideas into sustainable healthtech companies.

About Health Incubator Helsinki
Health Incubator Helsinki is a comprehensive incubator program in Finland for research-based, early-stage teams and start-ups operating in the health sector. The incubator, initiated by the City of Helsinki and the University of Helsinki and operating in close co-operation with Health Capital Helsinki, started operations in 2020 with a first batch of 12 brilliant start-ups under its wing. The incubator is open for new applications until 19 March 2023, more info here.

About DigitalWell Ventures
DigitalWell Ventures is a virtual startup accelerator with locations in Sweden, Norway and Finland, supporting Nordic & Baltic digital health and welfare tech startups to get traction and funding for scaling. A collaboration between the DotoalWell Arena initiative and Xplorico.