What do the Future Tech Hotshots tell us about healthcare innovation?

CB Insights recently dropped a Future Tech Hotshots list, with companies spanning enterprise tech, financial services, industrials, consumer & retail, media & entertainment, and of course, healthcare. The Future Tech Hotshots list was compiled looking at metrics including commercial maturity, exit probability, startup health score, headcount (<100), patents, and funding. CB Insights featured 6 healthcare companies out of the 52 companies on their list. What do these selected companies tell us about the future of health tech? 

Future Tech Hotshots

Known-well 

What they do: Known-well offers shame-free remote and in-person primary care, nutrition counseling, health coaching, and metabolic health services. Current in-person care available in Texas and New England. Total raised: $24.5 million. 

Our Ritual 

What they do: Our Ritual offers couples therapy that combines weekly expert sessions with self-guided work through their app. Total raised: $7.2 million. 

Laudio 

What they do: Laudio is an intelligent platform that streamlines work for frontline leaders and prioritizes high-impact actions with their teams, driving large-scale change at health systems. Primary use cases include managing teams, staying up-to-date with training and compliance, and improving patient experience via AI-powered suggested actions. 

Summer Health 

What they do: Summer Health is a telehealth service that connects parents with pediatricians via text message, with a guaranteed response within 15 minutes. Their $20/ month subscription fee includes texting, unlimited visits for children, visit notes, and specialist access. Total raised: $19.1million.

Neura Health 

What they do: Neura Health is a virtual neurology clinic connecting patients with top neurologists and physician assistants. They treat headaches and migraines, sleep disorders, seizures, concussions, stroke recovery, tremors, and other neurological conditions. Total raised: $10.3 million.

Zephyr AI 

What they do: Zephyr AI focuses on data for precision medicine within the healthcare sector. The company develops proprietary algorithms to extract insights from clinicogenomics data, patient outcomes in oncology, and cardiometabolic diseases powered by AI and machine learning. Total raised: $129.5 million. 

What this tells us 

• Telehealth is not dead: Virtual care skyrocketed during the first two years of the  Covid-19 pandemic. While in-person visits have resumed and are still preferred by many patients and providers, there are good reasons why telehealth companies are still thriving. People love being able to save time by not driving to visits and waiting around among sick people. In the case of Our Ritual, by offering telehealth couple’s therapy, they eliminate the need for two people to juggle their schedules to get to an appointment. Couple’s therapy on the couch in the comfort of your own home sounds like a win. 

• We are still in our consumerization of healthcare era: Known-well, Our Ritual, Summer Health and Neura Health are all B2C companies. They have also identified pain points among consumers. Known-well recognized that weight-shaming was a barrier to primary care and offers compassionate primary care as well as metabolic health care for patients interested in weight loss treatment. Therapists are in short supply, so Our Ritual cuts out the googling and phone calls to find someone accepting new patients. Summer Health recognized that parents often just need a quick question answered or a gut check when it comes to their children’s health, and reduced the cost and friction associated with accessing a pediatrician. Neura Health capitalized on the shortage of neurologists, often with 6+ month wait lists for new patients, and by offering telehealth they cut out the need to drive to a visit – a barrier to care for many patients with neurological health issues. 

• AI is powering health innovation: The majority of the companies featured are focused on increasing access to care and human interactions. However, the two B2B companies lean in hard to AI models to both improve workflows for healthcare workers, and advance precision medicine. These are two examples of a larger trend to make the massive amount of healthcare data work better for care providers and patients. 

What’s missing 

The CB Insights Future Tech Hotshots list is an intriguing food for thought list and analysis, but as it covers the expanse of technology innovation, the healthcare companies offer a small snapshot of what’s happening in the industry. Rock Health’s Healthcare Innovation at the Turn of 2025 post provides more robust reflections on trends and their maturity between 2023-2024 and what we can expect in 2025. Digital Health Insights has covered most of these hot topics, including digital twins, next-generation wearables and biomarkers, AI in healthcare, and food as medicine.