Why Health Tech Is Just Getting Started - Thomas Goergen (Catalpa Ventures)
Innovation and Private Capital x auliumShow Notes
Thomas Goergen spent 30 years in Luxembourg's fund industry, exited his AIFM business for a low nine-figure sum, and started a family office — only to discover that digital health offered something his fintech and real estate plays never did: purpose at scale. Now, as founder of Catalpa Ventures, he's betting that Europe is standing in front of a wave in healthcare innovation, driven by aging populations, labor shortages, and AI tools that didn't exist three years ago.
The conversation unpacks the structural barriers holding European healthtech back — from risk-averse pension funds that won't write checks under €20 million, to telemedicine regulations that advanced during COVID then snapped back to prohibition. Goergen argues that two-thirds of general practitioner diagnoses could happen remotely, that vocal biomarkers can predict heart failure 80% more precisely than a scale, and that AI agents can free doctors from administrative overload that consumes a third of their time. But conviction alone doesn't move capital: institutional allocators in Europe deploy a fraction of what U.S. endowments commit to venture, and without policy pressure or minimum allocation thresholds, the gap will widen.
**Key Discussion Points:**
🏥 Healthcare consumes huge GDP share but remains the second-least digitized industry — prevention, remote monitoring, and workflow automation represent massive efficiency plays
🤖 AI-native healthtech has no legacy drag — funds launching now avoid the risk of portfolio companies being outflanked by LLM-driven competitors
💶 European reimbursement models create both moat and risk — startups must design for payer economics, not just patient outcomes, or face retroactive pricing cuts
🩺 Vocal biomarkers, gamma-frequency therapy for dementia, and compliance-wrapped foundational models for hospital systems illustrate how fast the product landscape is moving
🇪🇺 Catalpa's thesis centers on three mega-trends: aging society, skilled labor shortage, and rising system costs — all durable, all worsening, all investable
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About Thomas Goergen [Founder of Catalpa Ventures]:Founder of Catalpa Ventures, a healthtech-focused venture capital fund targeting thirty million euros by 2027, having closed ten million euros in November. He spent 25 years in Luxembourg's fund industry, exited Luxembourg Investment Solutions to Sanne Group, and subsequently ran a family office for nearly eight years before launching Catalpa Health Fund I. His portfolio includes RetroBrain, a Hamburg-based maker of therapeutic video games now used in over six hundred nursing homes, Noah Labs, and Remi Health.About Aulium:Aulium is a video show exploring Innovation and Private Capital, hosted by Thomas Viguier.Connect with us:➡ Aulium on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aulium➡ Thomas Viguier: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tviguier/
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