#Twenty25 - Funding the future of health tech - Part 13/20 Interview with Ruth Coleman, Mercia Ventures

Ian Coyne:  Let’s talk about the three horizons. One is 2025, what do you think will be interesting in health tech? What's current? The second is beyond that, what are the big themes or focus areas or technologies you think will be really interesting? And the third is if you had a magic wand and could change anything to accelerate innovation, what would that look like?

Ruth Coleman:

AI is set to continue transforming healthcare innovation, with a notable shift towards multimodal AI technologies. These advancements represent a significant evolution from today's point-solution AI systems. As the AI healthcare landscape becomes increasingly competitive, these point solutions will find it more difficult to compete.

Multimodal AI holds immense transformative potential for healthcare due to its ability to integrate and analyze diverse datasets—spanning notes, test, lab results, omics, and audio—by reading, seeing, hearing, and sensing. This integration will enhance triaging, diagnosis, treatment, and care coordination. This will alleviate the administrative burden on clinicians, addressing a critical challenge in an overburdened healthcare system

Ian: Are there any business models you think will be more attractive in 2025?

Ruth: Direct-to-consumer models will continue to grow. I believe more and more consumers care about their own health and are becoming more willing to pay for their own healthcare, especially on the prevention side.

Tech-enabled services is an interesting business model, by definition the human in already in the loop, which from a workflow and acceptability perspective makes adoption easier. Margins within this segment has made it difficult to find winners, but there are clear opportunities to enhance efficiencies with AI making it more attractive.

Ian: How comfortable do you think people will be knowing they're speaking to AI in a medical sense?

Ruth: I think you'll always need a human within the loop in healthcare. There will be interactions with AI, but a person will provide the final decision-making. It's important to have human logic checkpoints on top of AI.

Ian: If you had a magic wand, what would you change to accelerate health tech innovation?

Ruth: I would turn the existing healthcare system on its head so that it rewards providers to provide proactive coordinated prevention orientated care rather than the existing one which tends to be more a reactive form of healthcare provision. There are too many incredible preventative health tech innovations that could save patients’ lives but do not see the light of day because of this fundamental issue in the incentive structure.

---

Ruth Coleman, Investment Manager at Mercia Ventures

Ruth is an Investment Manager for Mercia’s EIS Team with a focus on investing in early and growth stage technology companies. Based in London, Ruth’s role focuses on sourcing, transacting, and managing investments for the southeast region.

About Mercia Ventures