Investors and influencers from digital health space to gather in Dublin

29 May 2013

Sproxil founder 3Ashifi Gogo who will be in Dublin tomorrow for the digital health conference

Dublin-based health-tech accelerator HealthXL is tomorrow set to host an event to connect influencers from the digital health arena with venture capitalists, as well as giving seven start-ups the opportunity to pitch to potential investors.

HealthXL is a spin-out from the Startupbootcamp accelerator programme. The Dublin initiative is supported by IBM, Enterprise Ireland, Silicon Valley Bank, Novartis, Cleveland Clinic, GlaxoSmithKline, PHS, Novartis and NESTA.

For the past three months, seven digital health start-ups have been based at the Trinity Technology and Enterprise Campus in Dublin where they have been getting mentoring from a global network of mentors, including the investor Esther Dyson and O’Reilly Media founder Tim O’Reilly, to help them scale up.

Tomorrow, these seven ventures, which hail from not only Ireland, but also Australia, Ghana, Canada, the US and Finland, will be pitching their business plans to potential investors.

Ahead of this pitching session, up to 50 influencers from the digital health area will discussing the growing sector. Areas that will be up for debate will include digital health in Silicon Valley and in emerging markets.

Those in attendance tomorrow will include Barry O’Brien from Silicon Valley Bank; Gary Fingerhut from Cleveland Clinic; Leslie Ziegler, co-founder of Rock Health, the San Francisco, California-based seed accelerator for digital health start-ups; and Ashifi Gogo, the founder of Sproxil, a Boston-based social enterprise that has pioneered an SMS verification service to detect counterfeit medicines.

Darren Hite, a partner at the San Francisco digital health investment firm Aberdare Ventures, will also be speaking at tomorrow’s event.

He said Aberdare Ventures invests in “transformational” healthcare opportunities.

“HealthXL shares our vision and I am looking forward to participating in their event and meeting their talented entrepreneurs,” he said.

Tomorrow’s event will take place in the Trinity Biomedical Sciences building on Pearse Street, Dublin 2, starting at 2pm.

Med-tech image via Shutterstock

Carmel Doyle was a long-time reporter with Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com