Leadership perspectives from Doers Summit 2026, Limassol
At Doers Summit 2026 in Limassol, investors, founders and healthcare leaders explored one of the defining questions in healthcare innovation today. How can digital health move beyond hype to become scalable, evidence-based and financially sustainable?
Participants:
- Alexander Vaselek, Founder & CEO, CIMEDO
- Dr Lawrence Petalidis, Director Partnerships & Alliances, M42 Health
- Anna Khechoyan, Investment Manager, Zubr Capital
- Mikhail Prytkov, Founder & CEO, Simple
- Moderated by Laura Iriarte Zabalaga, Head of PR & Communications, Zero One Hundred Conferences
While perspectives differed across investment, consumer health and large-scale healthcare infrastructure, the discussion converged on a common conclusion. Healthcare innovation will increasingly be judged not by technological novelty but by the ability to generate measurable real-world value.
What You Will Learn
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Prevention Moves Upstream
One of the strongest themes throughout the discussion was the shift from reactive healthcare to prevention and continuous health management.
Anna Khechoyan argued that consumer health technologies are increasingly the “front door” to healthcare. Patients now engage with healthcare long before entering hospitals or clinics, using wearables, wellness applications and digital coaching platforms.
For investors, this presents a significant opportunity. Unlike traditional healthcare sectors such as drug development or advanced medical devices, consumer health platforms can scale faster and engage users continuously. However, long-term success still depends on demonstrating clinical relevance and payer value.
Mikhail Prytkov, Founder & CEO of Simple, described how consumer expectations around health management are changing rapidly, particularly in metabolic health and weight management.
According to Prytkov, the rise of GLP-1 therapies and wearable technologies has accelerated the public's willingness to actively manage their health rather than rely solely on insurers or traditional care pathways.
“People, especially in the States, are starting to pay for their own health out of pocket. They do not want to wait for insurance companies to sort out their claims. They want to get the service now.”
He outlined a future in which wellness platforms, wearable devices, pharmacies and clinical services become increasingly interconnected through unified patient data ecosystems.
However, Prytkov also acknowledged a major structural gap. Consumer health companies often excel at engagement and user behaviour but lack integration with traditional healthcare infrastructure, reimbursement systems and insurer networks.
Data Infrastructure and the Evidence Economy
The most substantive intervention came from Dr Lawrence Petalidis of M42 Health, who emphasised healthcare data infrastructure as the foundation for future healthcare innovation.
Petalidis described how Abu Dhabi and the UAE have developed large-scale sovereign healthcare data ecosystems capable of supporting population-level prevention, real-world evidence generation and AI deployment.
M42 Health operates a major health information exchange infrastructure that consolidates data from approximately 90 electronic medical record systems into unified patient records accessible across the healthcare ecosystem.
Patients can access records, prescriptions and claims through digital platforms such as Sahatna, while national-scale genomic programmes are enabling entirely new forms of population health analysis.
Petalidis cited recent work identifying families at elevated risk of vision impairment through genomic analysis of hundreds of thousands of individuals.
For Petalidis, the strategic value of these systems lies not simply in data collection, but in their ability to generate deployable evidence.
“Evidence is the currency between an operator and investors.”
He also highlighted the importance of reimbursement architecture and deployment capability, citing M42 Health’s rapid deployment of a reimbursed liquid biopsy programme shortly after FDA approval.
Critically, Petalidis argued that healthcare AI now faces a credibility challenge. Despite the growing adoption of predictive models, decision support systems and generative AI tools, robust evidence demonstrating measurable value for patients, providers and healthcare systems remains limited.
His conclusion was direct. The next phase of healthcare investment will depend on proving value, not simply claiming innovation.
Europe’s Commercialisation Problem
Alexander Vaselek focused on one of Europe’s persistent structural weaknesses. Commercial scaling.
According to Vaselek, many strong healthcare innovations fail not because the technology is weak, but because startups cannot access the right strategic networks, including healthcare operators, insurers or corporate partners.
CIMEDO therefore focuses heavily on strategic positioning and acquisition pathways rather than relying primarily on IPO outcomes.
Vaselek also criticised Europe’s regulatory environment, arguing that increasing complexity continues to weaken Europe’s competitiveness relative to faster-moving healthcare ecosystems.
At the same time, he identified occupational health and employer-funded prevention programmes as potentially important drivers of growth in European healthcare innovation.
Large corporations increasingly recognise that workforce health management is becoming a strategic business issue rather than simply a healthcare issue.
Who Pays for Prevention?
One of the unresolved tensions throughout the discussion was reimbursement.
Preventive healthcare creates long-term value, yet healthcare systems, insurers, governments and employers often operate on different financial timelines and incentives.
The panel acknowledged that generating evidence is costly and that partnerships among startups, operators and investors will become increasingly necessary to support deployment and validate reimbursement.
Petalidis noted that these relationships are inherently complex and must create value for all participants.
This may ultimately become one of the defining healthcare investment questions of the next decade. Not whether prevention works, but who is willing to finance the evidence required to scale it.
Connectivity as Competitive Advantage
The panel concluded around a recurring theme. Connectivity.
Not merely technological interoperability, but strategic connectivity among investors, startups, health systems, insurers, employers and policymakers.
Prytkov described the opportunity as “connecting the dots” between consumer engagement and clinical healthcare systems. Vaselek warned that many healthcare innovations remain “in limbo” because they cannot reach the right decision-makers. Petalidis extended the idea internally, arguing that innovation within large healthcare organisations succeeds only when operational leaders, innovators and decision-makers are effectively connected.
The discussion ultimately reinforced a broader reality now shaping healthcare globally.
The next generation of healthcare winners will not necessarily be those with the most ambitious technologies. They will be those capable of combining evidence, infrastructure, reimbursement pathways and strategic partnerships into scalable healthcare ecosystems.
Key Takeaways
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