France President’s Plans for Global Healthcare Innovation Observes the Blooming of Paris’ Health-Technology Start-ups 

An announcement was made in the year 2021 by the President of France, Emmanuel Macron on the €7.5-billion (US$7.9-billion) plan aimed at making France a global health-care innovation leader by 2030. 

Although it is too early to say whether he will achieve his ambition or not, researches on the ground say that the health-technology sector is growing and maturing.

According to a survey by France Biotech, an industry body based in Paris, between 2020 and 2022, the number of health-technology companies grew from 2,050 to 2,640.

In addition to that, the proportion of enterprises with at least one subsidiary abroad rose from one in five in 2021 to one in four last year, and the percentage of medical-technology and diagnostics companies with products on the market grew by 6 percentage points, to 56%.

The survey overall confirms that, more than one-quarter of the companies were based in the greater Paris region resulting in the development of the plan made by France’s President.

In the 2021 Nature Index, researchers at institutions in the Paris metropolitan area accounted for 44% of France’s total research output and for 48% of its output in the biological sciences. Here, leading figures at three companies discuss the benefits and downsides of launching and running medical-technology businesses in the French capital.

Co-founder of Paris-Based start-up firm Resolve Stroke and chief technology officer Vincent Hingot says that start-ups launching in the French capital enjoy some key benefits. “It is easy to start a company in Paris,” he says. “The concentration of top universities and research groups means it attracts a lot of talent. There are also more in-person events and networking opportunities here.”

Paris also has disadvantages as a place to start a medical-technology business, according to Hingot. “While French government agencies and universities provide a lot of support in the form of funding, subsidies and access to facilities, competition for these is greater in the capital because it is home to a large number of start-ups and the higher costs of office space.”

Last month, Resolve Stroke announced it had secured €2.2 million in seed funding. The financing round was led by two Paris-based venture-capital companies, OVNI Capital and Quantonation, but Hingot says that the company might have to consider moving some of its operations away from Paris as it grows and gets closer to launching its products. “We are still young and we have found investors willing to take a risk on us,” he says. “However, at some point, we may have to move at least some of our activities to the United States or somewhere where greater volumes of investment funds are available. The US market is a prime target for us.”