Third Health Tech Day: investors pitched to founders and eight HFE accelerator companies took the Latitude59 stage

The third Health Tech Day took place in Tallinn on 19 May, and the healthtech programme continued on the Latitude59 stages on 21 and 22 May.

Latitude59 2026 gave the healthtech community of Estonia and the wider New Nordic region several days to show what is being built here. Health Tech Day on 19 May brought six investors, international speakers from Singapore and the UK, an AI panel and five founding teams to the stage. On 21 May, ten healthtech companies pitched on the Latitude59 Pitching Stage, eight of them alumni of the Health Founders Estonia (HFE) accelerator. The same day, a panel on the Bold Stage asked why Nordic healthtech is moving more slowly than the region’s strengths would suggest. On 22 May, the focus turned to oncology.

Health Tech Day: the technology is rarely the hard part

Health Tech Day took place for the third time on 19 May, this year at Erinevate Tubade Klubi. The Latitude59 side event brought together founders, investors, clinicians, researchers and ecosystem partners from digital health and life sciences, connecting the local community with international investors and partners.

Erki Mölder, Managing Partner at Verge HealthTech Fund and the Chairman of Health Founders Estonia (HFE) Advisory Council, opened the day with a keynote on new technologies and old truths. His starting point was simple: healthcare gives technology its purpose, and technology gives healthcare its reach. That is the balance every healthtech founder is trying to strike, and it framed the whole afternoon.

Elizabeth Jennings (Venture Atlas Labs) moderated the AI readiness panel with Edgars Labsvīrs, Matti Hautsalo, and Stiven Lipetski. The discussion kept returning to the same point: the technology is rarely the hard part. The system around it is.

The panel’s advice to founders was practical. Read a hospital’s strategy before you pitch to it. Treat regulation as something built for a reason, not as a wall. Adoption is really a change-management problem, and the strongest companies pair new technology with deep clinical understanding, not the other way around.

The international view: look beyond Estonia from day one

The international speakers came from Singapore and the UK. Teng Han Koh (I-Wellnest) shared the Singapore perspective, and Christopher Mckee and Mariia Rubtsova (Propel Healthtech) spoke from the UK. The message that ran through their talks was consistent: think beyond the Estonian market from the very first day.

This time, the investors pitched

The format people had most looked forward to was the investor reverse pitch. Instead of founders pitching to investors, six funds and investor networks made their own case for why a team should take their money. On stage were Nordic Science Investments, Verge HealthTech Fund, Norrsken Evolve, the Estonian Business Angels Network (EstBAN), Frumtak Ventures and PurposeTech.

Then it was the founders’ turn: five pitches in half an hour from Muun Health, Nanordica Medical, Muuza, Flyt Medical and Lyfery. Together, the pitches gave an honest snapshot of where Estonian, Lithuanian and Norwegian healthtech actually is: further along than many people think. The evening continued with networking on the rooftop at Ülemiste City.

Latitude59 Pitching Stage

On 21 May, ten early-stage healthtech and biotech teams took the Latitude59 Pitching Stage, in a session moderated by Natalia Pervjakova. Eight HFE startups pitched: LS Medical, CareHand, Glurry, CogniFlow, AURAGUARD, Evie by HealthPhy, Supercharger Labs and Lyfery.

The jury was Elizabeth Jennings, Egita Polanska and Zdenek Fred Fous. On 21 and 22 May, visitors could also meet the HFE startups at our Latitude59 booth.

What is holding Nordic healthtech back

Later that day, healthtech moved to the Latitude59 main stage. On the Bold Stage, Elizabeth Jennings gave a keynote titled “Healthtech’s Brave New World”. 

Straight after, Katrina Laks, Community Lead at HFE and founder and CEO of Migrevention, opened the panel “HealthTech updates in New Nordics” with a blunt question. The New Nordics have world-class data, high digital literacy and trusted health institutions. So what is taking so long? She was joined by Priit Salumaa, founder and CEO of Better Medicine, Inka Mero of Voima Ventures, and Andri Heiðar Kristinsson of Frumtak Ventures, who had made his first investment in Estonia six months earlier. Four points stood out.

Proprietary data is now the real moat. Companies building on generic datasets are struggling. Those with clinical data collected over years hold an asset that becomes more valuable as AI matures. The panel pointed to Sooma Medical, which has treated more than 30,000 patients, and Better Medicine, whose BMVision Kidney was the first AI solution for kidney cancer detection to receive CE marking under the EU Medical Device Regulation (MDR). That kind of depth cannot be replicated quickly.

Regulatory complexity is a moat as well as a wall. MDR, GDPR and FDA pathways are demanding and slow. But a company that gets through them has built something competitors cannot easily copy.

The reimbursement model needs to catch up. Healthcare payers, not only providers, are starting to engage. If Europe’s universal health systems find new ways to finance adoption, they will have a structural advantage the US private market does not.

One rule change that would move the needle. Katrina asked Inka Mero which single regulatory change she would make tomorrow. Her answer was clear: make the Nordics a unified licensing zone within Europe. One approval, every market.

On who will drive the change, all three panellists gave a similar answer: founders inside and outside the system, venture investors willing to take the long view, and individual champions in hospitals ready to start the change quietly. Small countries can move fast, as Estonia and Iceland have both shown.

Oncology: can innovation scale beyond the home system

The week’s last healthtech discussion took place on 22 May, also on the Bold Stage. In the panel “Cancer care: a local challenge or a scalable tech?”, Priit Kruus, Kristel Leif, Rille Pihlak and Erki Mölder discussed whether oncology innovation can scale beyond local healthcare systems, and what patients actually need while going through treatment.

Three things we take from the week

Healthcare changes more slowly because it is different. Biology, ethics, regulation and human trust do not behave like a media or retail market, and that friction is part of the system. What has changed is that the enabling infrastructure is now in place. The next decade may do more than digitise healthcare. It may also change how people maintain their health and capability over the long term.

The ingredients for a Nordic-Baltic health and deep-tech strategy are all present. The region has research capability, policy alignment, founders and capital. There is also a growing understanding that scaling in this field requires long-term ecosystem thinking rather than isolated bets. The gap between having the ingredients and building something with them is still real, but it is closing.

Small markets are no longer the limitation they once seemed. High digital trust and strong public health data infrastructure give companies here a good starting point. Founders also have to think globally from day one, because the local market alone will never be enough.

Thank you to every ecosystem partner, speaker, founder and fund who joined us during the week. This community keeps growing, and it showed. See you next year.

About the Health Founders Estonia accelerator

The Health Founders Estonia accelerator supports healthtech companies according to their stage of development. DEFINE is for early-stage teams that want to move from an idea to a validated business model. DEVELOP focuses on product development, clinical validation and regulatory readiness. GROW is for companies ready for international growth and export.

HFE is Funded by the European Union through EIS | Enterprise Estonia in cooperation with Startup Estonia, to develop a strong and globally competitive healthtech ecosystem in Estonia.