Today, over 500,000 medical technologies are available in hospitals, homes, and community care settings. They range from simple bandages to complex, multi-part body scanners that cost millions of dollars to develop. Yet a typical technology has a lifecycle of just 21 months before an improved product usurps it - the healthcare ecosystem is rapidly advancing and driven by a constant flow of innovation. And those innovations need innovators.
With $21 billion made available for investment in the digital healthcare industry in 2020 (a 20x increase on 2010), entrepreneurs, investors, and related actors are entering the healthcare ecosystem in greater numbers than ever before. Last year alone, over 17,000 medical technology patents were filed, the third highest of all patent types. Each of those has a dedicated team of innovators behind it. Yet with increasingly strict regulations and pharmaceutical giants growing more aggressive, many thousands of entrepreneurs fail before even the patent stage: just 2% secure revenue or adoption.
How to Learn to Fly is a down-to-earth survival guide for entrepreneurs struggling to secure a strategic position within the healthtech ecosystem. This guide is designed to help innovators navigate this complex and newly volatile landscape. It covers business strategy, marketing, funding acquisition, and operation in a global regulatory context. It is written in simple language, evidenced by the latest academic and industry research, and explained using real-world examples and case studies.
About the Author: Educated at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Silvia Micalo is a biotechnologist with
over 15 years of professional experience in different divisions (marketing and commercial,
R&D&I, and digital transformation). She has held managerial positions within high performance
teams in the pharmaceutical industry at companies such as Wyeth, Novartis,
Ipsen Pharma, Thea, Lundbeck, and Johnson & Johnson.
Currently, she is CEO and founder of Sunshineoxygen.com, an international healthtech
company focused on the healthcare and healthtech ecosystems. Besides launching a
pipeline of healthtech SaaS and digital therapeutics products, the company offers an
advisory service to entrepreneurs in the healthtech community and runs an institution that
teaches entrepreneurship skills to startups.
Highly focused on performance excellence, Micalo creates and develops value-innovative
projects involving key stakeholders in the healthcare environment (the pharmaceutical
industry, healthtech startups, public health authorities, and patient associations), and she
regularly shares her expertise as a global speaker.
Micalo excels at designing strategies and implementing profitable marketing tactics, and she
has a broad experience in successfully leading business and brand roadmaps. She has
driven multiple successful product go-to-markets and strategic re-launches, and she has
redirected product life cycles in the healthcare and healthtech environments towards
success, sharing her services with different pharmaceutical companies and private
healthcare institutions.
As part of her career, Micalo has been an integral member of the Comité de Marketing
Farmacéutico from the Club de Marketing de Barcelona and Associate Professor at the
University of Girona. Also, she is a speaker for the Pharmaceutical Marketing Masterclass to
students of the Master's in Management and Business Administration at the University of
Girona.
In the entrepreneurship field, Micalo has been a jury member of a healthtech startup contest
and participated as a board member in pharmaceutical laboratories and healthtechs acting
as an advisor.
Alongside her entrepreneurship at SunshineOxygen.com, Micalo provides high-level
strategic advice and acts as Board Advisor to several international pharmaceutical and
healthtech companies at national and international levels.
