HealthTech in France The global coronavirus pandemic has forced French companies to respond to current and future needs. Vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics, medical devices.

More than a hundred medical innovations have been deployed. A demonstration of agility, reactivity, resilience and collaboration. More than 2,000 companies, including 750 biotechs, 1,100 medtechs and 200 digital health startups make the French HealthTech ecosystem a solid, dynamic and internationally recognized sector. It’s growing in maturity and economic value.

Over the past five years, the sector has doubled its turnover and increased the number of business creations. And even the very small businesses have global aspirations. International partnerships represent one third of collaborations for French companies!

France is a great environment for startup creation and for conducting R&D thanks to grants, funding, tax incentives, labour and social costs reductions. Healthtech companies in France accounted for nearly 50,000 direct and indirect jobs in 2020, mostly highly qualified jobs. At the heart of this revolution: R&D. Healthtech companies are mostly spin-offs from public research.

More than half of their spending is on R&D and they have filed more than 30,000 patents. French companies are developing over 4,000 medical innovations: drugs, medical devices, digital health solutions. Whilst biotech and medtech represent the majority of companies, digital health and bioinformatics are experiencing strong growth. The health crisis has had a strong impact on business activity, affecting their fundraising and levels of capital.

As part of the Recovery Plan, more than €6 billion will be invested in medical infrastructure, and the fourth ‘Investing in the Future’ Program will contribute more than €20 billion to support research and innovation ecosystems. The Recovery Plan provides for a €20 billion reduction in production taxes and financial support to digitalize the production and develop manufacturing capacities in France.

Bpifrance and France Biotech play a major role in their development through its various financing activities.

Thanks to French healthtech, France is fully playing its role in the technological shift and aims to be the first European nation to innovate in healthcare.