International Finance Corporation, has launched TechEmerge Health Brazil, a matchmaking programme offering market access and funding to global technology startups with proven health innovations relevant to Brazil.
“Brazil presents a strong market opportunity for tech innovators,” Ruzgar Barisik, senior investment officer at IFC, told Development Finance. “It is the eight largest healthcare market in the world, and set to grow to US$232 billion by 2021.”
Barisik explained that the TechEmerge programme provides funding and guidance to enable the top technology innovators to gain easier access to the Brazilian market. It facilitates the development of partnerships with potential customers and helps healthcare providers identify the innovations that are most relevant to achieving their objectives so they can move to rapid pilot programmes.
The Brazilian service providers participating in the TechEmerge programme range from hospital networks to specialty clinics, home care and diagnostic lab networks. They have facilities across all regions in Brazil, serving both urban and rural populations.
“The Brazilian healthcare system faces multiple challenges, including an overstretched and underfunded public system, increases in medical costs exceeding general inflation, a shortage of beds, and an asymmetric distribution of resources and physicians,” added Barisik. “The TechEmerge Programme aims at accelerating the adoption of innovations by the Brazilian healthcare providers to address these challenges.”
The programme focuses on technology innovations which are market ready and cost efficient. Some of the identified priorities include clinical data analytics, patient engagement tools, artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Additional criteria, listed by Barisik, are competitiveness and scalability, ability to execute locally and provide ongoing support, the level of regulatory approvals required to deploy locally, and the impact potential the technology can bring to improve healthcare delivery and patient outcomes on the ground. The assessment is supported by a consultation with global industry and technical experts.
“We believe that the private sector is often better positioned to quickly adopt innovations in healthcare and can serve as a role model for other private and public healthcare providers,” said Barisik.
The TechEmerge programme is part of IFC’s approach to support entrepreneurship and innovation in emerging markets, and leverage the private sector in Brazil to increase and improve access to quality health services. IFC has a global investment portfolio of more than US$1.7billion in the healthcare sector. The programme is being implemented in partnership with the Finnish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment and the Israeli Ministry of Economy and Industry. It is supported by Bionexo, a Brazilian company offering digital solutions for the healthcare industry.