Future Health and Bridge for Billions Launch Programme to Scale Health Innovation Across Emerging Markets
Future Health, a global initiative by Abu Dhabi, is partnering with Bridge for Billions to launch a new entrepreneurship programme aimed at strengthening promising healthcare ventures in emerging markets. The initiative will provide entrepreneurs with structured business development support, specialist expertise, professional networks and opportunities to connect with healthcare systems, with the goal of helping locally developed health solutions expand their reach and deliver broader impact.
The programme will focus on early-stage health ventures across Africa and Asia that have moved beyond the initial idea stage but still need support to establish sustainable business models, navigate regulatory requirements and prepare for growth. By combining tailored online capacity-building with potential access to Abu Dhabi’s health innovation ecosystem, the initiative seeks to help promising businesses overcome barriers that frequently prevent healthcare innovations from reaching more patients and communities.
The collaboration comes amid persistent challenges in funding and scaling healthcare entrepreneurship across emerging markets. Although these regions face significant healthcare needs and offer substantial opportunities for innovation, many locally founded businesses struggle to secure investment, obtain specialist guidance and build relationships with healthcare providers and other stakeholders needed to expand their operations.
Future Health and Bridge for Billions aim to address these gaps by supporting entrepreneurs who understand the communities they serve and are developing solutions suited to local healthcare priorities, affordability requirements and delivery conditions.
The programme will initially seek to identify approximately 50 entrepreneurs across Africa and Asia. Selected ventures will undergo a tailored online programme covering areas such as regulatory navigation, health-system integration, business-model validation and investor readiness. A smaller group of participants will subsequently be selected for an acceleration phase in Abu Dhabi, where they will have opportunities to engage with regulators, healthcare providers, research institutions and investors.
The initiative is intended to create practical pathways for promising health businesses to strengthen their operations, develop sustainable growth strategies and explore opportunities to expand into additional markets.
Addressing Funding and Growth Barriers in Emerging Markets
Emerging markets represent important opportunities for healthcare innovation, but entrepreneurs frequently face structural obstacles that can limit the development and expansion of their businesses. These challenges may include limited access to venture capital, insufficient specialist mentorship, complex regulatory environments and difficulty establishing relationships with healthcare systems.
The funding landscape illustrates the scale of the challenge. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) Global Innovation Index 2024, Latin America and Africa together accounted for approximately 3% of global venture-capital deals in the first half of 2024. During the same period, venture-capital values declined by 19% in Asia-Pacific and 80% in Africa.
These figures highlight the difficulties that entrepreneurs in several emerging markets may face when seeking the financial resources needed to move from early development into commercial expansion. For healthcare ventures, funding constraints can be particularly challenging because products and services may require clinical validation, regulatory review, specialized infrastructure or partnerships with healthcare providers before they can reach a broader market.
A promising healthcare concept alone may not be sufficient to establish a viable business. Founders must also demonstrate that their solutions address a clearly defined need, can be delivered affordably, comply with applicable regulations and have a sustainable operating model.
Entrepreneurs may also need to demonstrate how their solutions can be integrated into existing healthcare systems. This can involve understanding procurement processes, reimbursement arrangements, clinical workflows, data requirements and the priorities of public and private healthcare providers.
The new Future Health and Bridge for Billions programme is designed to help founders strengthen these capabilities through structured support and access to relevant expertise. Rather than focusing exclusively on financing, the initiative will address several interconnected factors that influence whether a healthcare venture can develop, attract partners and scale.
Supporting Locally Developed Healthcare Solutions
A central principle of the programme is the value of entrepreneurs who understand the communities and healthcare environments in which their businesses operate.
Locally developed health solutions may be better positioned to address specific challenges related to affordability, access, infrastructure and patient needs. Founders who work closely with the communities they serve can draw on direct knowledge of how healthcare is delivered and where existing services may fall short.
Such knowledge can inform the development of products and services that are practical for local settings. Depending on the venture, these may include healthcare delivery models, digital health services, diagnostic approaches, medical technologies or other innovations designed to improve access and efficiency.
However, local insight must be supported by the business capabilities required to bring solutions to market. Entrepreneurs need to understand customer needs, validate demand, develop reliable operating models and build relationships with the institutions responsible for delivering or financing care.
The programme aims to help bridge the gap between identifying a healthcare problem and developing a scalable business that can address it sustainably.
Her Excellency Dr Noura Khamis Al Ghaithi, Undersecretary of the Department of Health – Abu Dhabi, emphasized the importance of combining entrepreneurs’ local understanding with access to expertise, networks and investment.
“Entrepreneurs with a deep understanding of the communities they serve can develop solutions grounded in real health needs, local realities, and affordability and access to the right expertise, networks and investment can help turn that potential into lasting impact,” Al Ghaithi said.
She added that the collaboration could help entrepreneurs strengthen their impact within their home markets while creating opportunities for promising solutions to reach additional populations.
“Future Health’s collaboration with Bridge for Billions can help deepen their impact at home, while creating pathways for the most promising solutions to reach more people over time,” she said.
The approach reflects the programme’s focus on developing businesses that can respond to local healthcare priorities while building the capabilities needed to expand responsibly.
Programme to Begin With Approximately 50 Entrepreneurs
The initiative will be delivered in multiple phases, beginning with the identification and assessment of approximately 50 entrepreneurs across Africa and Asia.
The first phase will focus on ventures that have progressed beyond the initial idea stage but remain early enough in their development to benefit from structured business support. This stage is intended to identify founders with promising solutions and the potential to build sustainable, scalable healthcare businesses.
Participating ventures will be assessed according to several criteria, including the quality and maturity of the business, scalability, market needs and relevance to health priorities.
These criteria are intended to help determine whether a venture has a sufficiently developed concept and a clear opportunity to benefit from the programme. Market relevance will also be important, as healthcare businesses need to demonstrate that their products or services address meaningful needs and can operate within the environments they intend to serve.
The selection process will seek to identify ventures with potential for further development rather than limiting participation to businesses that have already achieved substantial commercial growth. This allows the programme to focus on founders who may have promising solutions but still need guidance to strengthen their business strategies, operational readiness and ability to engage with healthcare stakeholders.
Following the initial assessment, selected entrepreneurs will advance to the programme’s structured online capacity-building phase.
Tailored Online Training to Strengthen Business Readiness
The second phase will provide a tailored online programme designed to help participating entrepreneurs address practical challenges associated with healthcare business development.
The curriculum will cover four central areas: regulatory navigation, health-system integration, business-model validation and investor readiness.
Regulatory navigation
Entrepreneurs will receive support in understanding regulatory requirements relevant to their ventures. Healthcare businesses often need to navigate product approvals, operating standards, quality requirements and other rules that vary by market. A clearer understanding of these requirements can help founders plan development activities and identify potential barriers earlier.
Health-system integration
Participants will explore how their products or services may fit into healthcare delivery systems. This includes understanding the needs of healthcare providers and other stakeholders, as well as the practical requirements involved in introducing an innovation into existing clinical or operational workflows.
Business-model validation
Founders will work on assessing the viability of their business models, testing assumptions about customer demand and identifying the resources needed to deliver their solutions. This process can help entrepreneurs evaluate whether their ventures can achieve sustainable operations while responding to healthcare needs and affordability constraints.
Investor readiness
The programme will help entrepreneurs strengthen their preparation for engagement with potential investors. This may include clarifying their growth strategies, communicating their value propositions and improving their ability to explain the market opportunity and resource requirements of their ventures.
These areas are closely connected. A healthcare venture may have a technically promising solution but still struggle to scale if its business model is not sustainable, its regulatory pathway is unclear or its product cannot be integrated into healthcare delivery.
By addressing these considerations together, the programme aims to help founders develop a more comprehensive understanding of what is required to build and grow a healthcare business.
Selected Ventures to Connect With Abu Dhabi’s Health Innovation Ecosystem
After the online programme, a smaller group of entrepreneurs will be selected for an acceleration phase in Abu Dhabi.
This phase will create opportunities for participating founders to engage with stakeholders across the emirate’s health innovation ecosystem, including regulators, healthcare providers, research institutions and investors.
Access to these stakeholders could help entrepreneurs better understand the requirements for developing and introducing healthcare innovations in new settings. Discussions with healthcare providers may help founders assess potential use cases and implementation needs, while engagement with research institutions could provide opportunities to explore scientific or technical collaboration.
Connections with regulators can also help businesses better understand the relevant requirements for operating in a healthcare environment. Meanwhile, engagement with investors may allow founders to communicate their business propositions and explore potential routes to financing.
The programme is designed to encourage longer-term relationships across the ecosystem rather than treating acceleration as a standalone event. For selected entrepreneurs, these connections may provide a foundation for exploring future partnerships, market development or wider growth opportunities.
Participation in the acceleration phase will not, by itself, guarantee investment, regulatory approval or commercial expansion. Instead, the programme is intended to improve entrepreneurs’ readiness and create opportunities to engage with organizations that may be relevant to their future development.
Strengthening the Organizations That Support Health Entrepreneurs
Bridge for Billions brings an additional focus to the collaboration through its work with entrepreneur support organizations (ESOs). These organizations often provide early-stage founders with mentoring, business development assistance and access to local networks.
In emerging markets, ESOs can play an important role because they understand the regulatory landscape, healthcare systems and communities in which local ventures operate. They may also work with entrepreneurs before those businesses are ready to attract external capital.
Pablo Santaeufemia, CEO of Bridge for Billions, emphasized the importance of strengthening these organizations alongside the entrepreneurs they support.
“Entrepreneur support organizations are closest to health founders in emerging markets. They understand the local regulatory landscape, the health systems and the communities where these ventures operate, and they are often the first to back a founder long before capital arrives,” Santaeufemia said.
He explained that Bridge for Billions supports these organizations through Conecta Healthcare, an initiative focused on the role of entrepreneur support organizations in healthcare innovation.
“Through Conecta Healthcare, Bridge for Billions advocates for ESOs and works alongside them, because strengthening these organisations is how we strengthen health entrepreneurship at scale,” he said.
Santaeufemia added that the collaboration with Future Health aims to equip both founders and the organizations supporting them with tools, networks and visibility to contribute to global health innovation, particularly across the Global South.
The involvement of ESOs reflects the importance of local support structures in developing entrepreneurial ecosystems. While individual founders may benefit from mentoring and training, the organizations that provide these services can also help build longer-term capacity within their regions.
Health Entrepreneurship and Wider Economic Benefits
Supporting healthcare ventures may also generate economic benefits beyond the direct delivery of health services. Healthcare businesses can create employment, develop specialized skills and contribute to broader networks of suppliers and service providers.
According to the World Bank Group, each health-sector job in low-income countries is associated with an estimated 3.4 additional jobs across related industries. This illustrates the potential relationship between investment in health systems, job creation and economic development.
The economic impact of healthcare entrepreneurship can extend across multiple areas, including technology development, manufacturing, logistics, professional services and healthcare operations. However, the scale of these benefits depends on factors such as business growth, local economic conditions and the ability of ventures to establish sustainable operations.
By helping promising businesses improve their readiness for growth, Future Health and Bridge for Billions aim to support ventures that may contribute to both healthcare access and economic opportunity in their home markets.
Applications and Programme Details to Be Announced
The new entrepreneurship programme forms part of Future Health’s year-round work to establish practical pathways for global health innovation to develop, scale and reach communities in need.
Through its collaboration with Bridge for Billions, Future Health aims to combine structured business support with access to expertise, networks and potential connections to Abu Dhabi’s health innovation ecosystem. The initiative will initially focus on approximately 50 entrepreneurs across Africa and Asia, followed by an online development phase and a selective acceleration opportunity in Abu Dhabi.
Applications, eligibility criteria and additional programme details will be announced at a later stage.
The initiative represents an effort to address several barriers that can limit the growth of health ventures in emerging markets, from limited access to capital and specialist guidance to difficulties navigating regulation and connecting with healthcare systems. By supporting locally developed solutions and the organizations that help entrepreneurs build their businesses, the programme seeks to create stronger foundations for sustainable healthcare innovation.
Its long-term value will depend on how effectively participating ventures translate the support they receive into viable businesses, stronger partnerships and solutions that respond to real healthcare needs. For entrepreneurs across Africa and Asia, the programme is intended to provide an additional pathway to develop their capabilities, explore new opportunities and bring promising health innovations to more people.
About Future Health – A Global Initiative by Abu Dhabi
Future Health is a year-round platform for global collaboration and transformative health innovation, held under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council.
Bringing together health researchers, policymakers, business leaders, investors and entrepreneurs from across disciplines and geographies, Future Health drives collective action to strengthen health systems and unlock longer, healthier lives for all.
Through a year-round programme of research insights, publications, impact initiatives, Challenges, R&D funding, and cross-sector convenings, Future Health advances progress across four focus areas: longevity and precision medicine, health systems and sustainability, digital health and AI, and investment in life sciences.
Future Health is curated and convened by the Department of Health – Abu Dhabi and its Founding Partners PureHealth, M42, Institute for Healthier Living Abu Dhabi, and Mubadala Bio. Mediclinic Middle East serves as Strategic Partner and Burjeel Holdings as Associate Partner.