How do you start a healthtech company in the UK?

Starting a healthtech company in the UK means abandoning the assumption that the NHS is your primary market. Too many founders build software and expect it to sell directly to the health service [Ep 27]. That's not how the route to market works.

The real challenges are harder and costlier than most anticipate. Regulatory compliance matters; ISO 27001 certification alone is expensive and time-consuming [#438]. You'll need to build a unit economics story that works beyond the UK, because venture investors won't back a billion-dollar pitch built solely on NHS sales [Ep 13]. That means either finding geographic expansion paths (Europe, US) or building a platform strategy where you acquire or consolidate fragmented provider networks [#382].

The funding landscape itself has a gap. There's no dedicated UK healthtech fund that genuinely understands both NHS and private sector dynamics [#124]. This forces founders to either bootstrap longer or pitch to generalist VCs. The advantage: you can move fast with a small team if your product design is sound. But expect it to be costly and slow.