There’s lots going on in the healthcare sector. We’re already doing well with two Great British pharmaceutical companies in the leading company rankings – GSK and AstraZeneca. They are well established in Poland and patients are increasingly demanding better healthcare.
The market has grown exponentially since 1990 and is now Europe’s 7th biggest market by value. Keep in mind Poland is one of the highest volume per capita healthcare markets as well. But it’s not just about drugs.
We also see a booming private healthcare market with a plethora of primary care clinics, dental surgeries and also a number of privately operated hospitals. Looking across the country there is also quite a bit of research going on and a number of key cities have science clusters and incubators which are accommodating the development of great ideas which are coming out of the universities.
For me last week was Healthcare Week – I had the opportunity to take part in and chair two great events. The first took place together with the BPCC in the Embassy Conference Centre focused on IT in Healthcare and the second the 2nd Central European Life Science Investment conference in Krakow. One common theme running through both meetings was the role of IT in medicine. Are the next innovations in health coming from IT? An interesting thought.
There are some really superb opportunities for companies in IT and health. Poland is great at IT – a well known fact. The UK has an advanced healthcare system which is constantly looking for efficiencies as it develops; so just what is going on?
The opportunities for IT and health
Definitely worth keeping a close eye on this as it develops. A number of immediate opportunities which are developing apace in Poland:
- IT and diagnostics – either online or tele-diagnostics
- IT and treatment – there’s all sorts of applications being developed to study trends, aid compliance and manage disease – great to see
- IT and personalised healthcare – this makes real sense as all patients are different and require an individual approach
The main focus of the Krakow event was identifying ways to finance innovative research – there are already quite a lot of IT health companies in business. With its heritage in health and rapidly developing health system Poland is definitely a country to watch.
For more info on health in Poland please contact martin.oxley@fco.gov.uk; we’d be happy to point you in the right direction.