In early 2021, Sanofi, Capgemini, Generali and Orange came together to create the largest e-health innovation ecosystem in Europe. The first batch of startups selected by Future4Care moved in to the premises in February 2022. Namely, 6,500 square meters in the south-east of Paris.
It currently has 35 young well-established e-health startups, four of them having over 100 employees. By 2025, it is expected that the premises will be home to 150 startups.
A new batch of companies is selected every six months around a chosen theme. In 2022, this theme was personalized and remote medicine. New themes will be chosen for future projects in early 2023.
Unlike an incubator, Future4Care helps e-health operators during their growth phase. In order to enable them to fine-tune their product, startups are tracked from start to finish, in the areas of business, data management and technology. “We help them manage their hyper-growth, by offering them help and advice in respect of their business relations, international expansion, and team structuring…,” said Philippe Michel, Director of Operations. Future4Care also offers training courses, in particular in management and on regulatory aspects specific to each market.
“Future4Care was set up in order to promote “cross fertilization”, i.e. startups offer major corporations a different vision of open innovation and in return these major corporations provide them with projects, content and even funding,” Philippe Michel, Director of Operations.
Future4Care is not the same as other accelerators, as most are financed either by a region in order to boost its attractiveness, or by a single big pharma company. “Our strength is that we involve the whole ecosystem, not just a single operator or a single shareholder. We rely upon a panel of major corporations that are in a position to help startups,” the Director of Operations pointed out.
Future4Care has within its ranks two other Prix Galien nominees (Wefight and Remedee Labs), plus a previous award winner from 2021, WhiteLab Genomics. Its digital platform, that significantly reduces research and development time for drugs based on DNA and RNA technologies, was an award winner in the “Best Collaboration in the Pharmaceutical or Biotechnology Industry” category.
“The Prix Galien is a way of introducing yourself to the world. The US is a critical target for us, given that some of our startups already have a presence there and the rest are keen to join them,” Philippe Michel said. The week before the Prix Galien awards ceremony, Future4Care organizes a delegation to Boston for its protégés, in order to introduce them to local organizations and intermediaries that are in a position to help them roll-out their operations.
Future4Care is an Institute that is also specialized in digital health and data. It is supported by a scientific committee, an ethics committee and a think tank, and regularly organizes a range of events (debates, conferences, discussion groups etc…) to which up to one thousand experts from the ecosystem are invited.