Philadelphia has long been a healthcare town, and that comes through in its startups.
Across the region, founders are building healthtech companies shaped less by hype and more by firsthand experience in the medical trenches.
“When you sit down with a surgeon, they can tell you the issues they have with the current technologies.”
Saif Khalil, Aevumed
“When you sit down with a surgeon, they can tell you the issues they have with the current technologies available for them,” said Saif Khalil, founder and CEO of AI-enabled surgical planning startup Aevumed. “They know what the limitations are.”
That familiarity with pain points in the system extends outside the operating room or clinic. It encompasses all parts of the complex physical and digital infrastructure that make “eds and meds” a bedrock of the region’s economy, from logistics to workflow to communication.
Companies like Aevumed, Roundtrip, SEED Therapeutics and Instinct offer a snapshot of what’s happening in healthcare innovation around Philadelphia.
Here are five trends we’ve seen in our healthtech startup reporting this year.
1) Insiders are starting the companies
Rather than identifying problems from market research alone, many Philly healthtech founders pull on personal experiences — whether inside clinics, ambulances or operating rooms — that revealed where existing tools were failing in practice.
That insider perspective is central to how veterinary software platform Instinct came to be. Founder Caleb Frankel, an emergency room vet by trade, told Technical.ly that the company emerged directly from his own experience on the job.
“This is a company born out of my own frustration,” Frankel said, noting that many veterinary hospitals were still using paper files and outdated software.
Industry observers have noted that this kind of human-centered approach to health innovation can improve adoption, because it focuses on actual needs and offers solutions designed around real workflows.
2) Workflow and logistics are ripe for innovation
There’s been a recent pattern of healthcare startups focusing on the systems surrounding care, instead of just clinical or treatment advancements.
Scheduling, documentation, transportation and communication often determine whether care happens at all.
At the ride-scheduling startup Roundtrip, the problem was logistics. CEO Ellen Williams traces the company’s origins back to founder Mark Switaj’s time as an EMT. “He started his career working on the back of an ambulance,” Williams said, “so he had seen that the logistics of patient transportation were a source of distress.”
Research shows that digital health solutions can reshape healthcare by improving access and efficiency, especially when they address real operational challenges.
3) Building for the reality that healthcare moves slowly
Healthcare is an industry replete with long timelines, complex regulations and cautious customers. While those constraints can frustrate founders accustomed to faster-moving tech sectors, many local companies are designing their businesses around that reality rather than trying to force speed.
At SEED Therapeutics, that long-term orientation is clear.
The clinical-stage biotech firm is developing molecular glue degraders to target previously undruggable proteins, a process that requires years of research and careful iteration. President and chief scientific officer James Tonra framed the company’s mission around who ultimately benefits from that work.
“The goal really is to have patients as our North Star,” Tonra said. “To help them, to give them new hope, to restore their health.”
Roundtrip’s leadership said the company quickly learned that even when the need is clear, adoption takes time. “One of the challenges that exists, particularly in healthcare technology, is the sales cycles tend to be really long,” Williams said. “When you first identify a potential customer, it can take years to actually turn them into a paying customer.”
4) AI as support, not replacement
Artificial intelligence is increasingly part of the healthcare conversation, and founders across these companies are being careful about how they position it.
At Aevumed, Khalil emphasized that the company’s software aims to augment surgical planning, not dictate it. “It’s really a tool,” Khalil said. “It’s not telling us what to do again, but it’s really optimizing that process, which is patient-driven technology.”
That framing reflects both ethical concerns and practical realities, as healthcare AI analysts emphasize that AI should act as a clinical assistant rather than replacing human judgment.
5) Letting the product find the capital
While many founders initially expect to pursue traditional venture capital, several local healthtech companies found early momentum coming from customers and strategic partners who believed in the product firsthand.
Ongoing trends in digital health investment, including unlabeled rounds and fewer mid-stage deals, are reflective of a more selective approach to scaling in healthcare.
Instinct’s early growth followed that pattern, per Frankel, who said investor interest often came directly from users after installations in animal hospitals went live.
“Every install,” Frankel said, “somebody would come up to me and say, ‘This is amazing. Are you taking investments?’”
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