Amsterdam is the perfect petri dish for health-tech innovation. The Netherlands combines a highly digitised healthcare infrastructure with a dense population and a culture that embraces pragmatism. As a result, the city has become a global leader in “Digital Health 2.0”, moving beyond simple wellness apps to regulated medical devices and infrastructure that integrates directly with hospitals. Here are the 10 Amsterdam-based health-tech startups you need to watch in 2026.
Luscii
Daan Dohmen founded Luscii with a radical vision that is to make the hospital obsolete for chronic care. The company offers a digital hospital at home platform that enables patients with conditions such as heart failure or COPD to remotely monitor their vital signs from the comfort of their own living rooms. Instead of routine check-ups that clog waiting rooms, Luscii’s AI analyses patient data and only alerts the care team when deterioration is detected. Used by over 70% of Dutch hospitals and expanding rapidly across the UK and Africa, they are the operational backbone of the decentralised healthcare movement.
Castor
Derk Arts, a medical doctor turned coder, founded Castor to fix the data waste in medical research. Realising that 85% of clinical research data is never reused, he built a cloud-based Electronic Data Capture (EDC) platform that makes running clinical trials user-friendly and machine-readable. By democratising access to research tools, Castor enabled thousands of COVID-19 studies to be launched in record time. With over $65 million in funding, they are building the global infrastructure that allows researchers to integrate data from wearables and EHRs seamlessly, accelerating the speed of medical discovery.
Onera Health
Ruben de Francisco founded Onera Health to revolutionise the sleep lab. Traditional sleep studies require patients to sleep in a clinic equipped with wires and sensors. Still, Onera has developed a patch-based sensor system that delivers clinical-grade diagnostics from the comfort of the user’s own bed. Their lab-on-a-chip technology captures EEG, EOG, and respiratory signals with the same accuracy as hospital equipment. Backed by a recent €30 million Series C, they are unlocking the mysteries of sleep disorders by making diagnostics accessible and scalable for the first time.
SkinVision
Melanoma is highly treatable if caught early, yet millions of cases are missed. SkinVision serves as a regulated medical device in your pocket, using AI to detect signs of skin cancer with 95% sensitivity. Users simply snap a photo of a mole, and the algorithm provides an instant risk assessment, along with a path to a doctor if needed. As the first certified skin cancer app in Europe, they have now amassed a database of millions of photos, creating a feedback loop that makes their AI smarter with every scan and effectively saving lives through early detection.
Incision
Surgeons cannot learn just by reading books, as they also need to see the procedure. Incision, co-founded by Prof. Dr Jaap Bonjer, acts as the Netflix for Surgeons. They have built a high-definition video platform that standardises surgical skills globally. By filming procedures in 3D and overlaying anatomical guides, they allow a surgeon in Kenya to learn the same technique as a surgeon in Amsterdam. With a focus on the WHO’s goal of safe surgery for all, Incision is now the accreditation standard for surgical training in hospitals worldwide.
Founda Health
Jan Joost Kalff founded Founda Health to address the nightmare of connectivity that modern hospitals face. Hospitals use legacy Electronic Health Records (EHRs) that struggle to talk to modern apps. Founda builds the API infrastructure for Stripe for Healthcare, enabling any digital health app to integrate with a hospital’s system once and scale globally. This eliminates the need for startups to build custom integrations for every client, unlocking an era of platform-based innovation in the medical sector.
Healthplus.ai
Bart Geerts founded Healthplus.ai to tackle the deadly problem of post-surgical infections. Their PERISCOPE tool uses existing electronic health record data to predict which patients are at high risk of disease before they even leave the operating room. By reusing data that hospitals already collect, they avoid the need for new sensors or workflows. This AI-driven foresight allows doctors to intervene earlier with antibiotics or monitoring, drastically reducing hospital readmissions and saving costs for insurers.
Lapsi Health
Jhonatan Bringas Dimitriades founded Lapsi Health to digitise the oldest tool in the doctor’s bag, the humble stethoscope. They are developing the next generation of sound-based medical devices, utilising advanced audio processing to remotely screen for respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Their technology can filter out ambient noise and isolate specific heart or lung sounds, allowing a doctor to perform a high-quality auscultation via a telemedicine call. It helps in turning sound waves into actionable clinical biomarkers.
Clear.
Piet Hein van Dam founded Clear. to bring the science of continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) to the general public. While CGMs are standard for people with diabetes, Clear uses them to show healthy people how their body reacts to specific foods in real-time. Their data-driven approach demonstrates that a banana may spike one person’s blood sugar level while having no effect on another. By offering personalised nutrition programs based on biology rather than diet trends, they are tackling the root causes of type 2 diabetes and obesity across the Netherlands.
Ancora Health
Sridhar Kumaraswamy built Ancora Health to shift medicine from sick care to proper prevention. Their platform conducts comprehensive health check-ups that combine DNA, blood tests, and lifestyle data to create a longitudinal health passport for employees and individuals. Instead of a static report, users get a personalised coaching plan to mitigate their specific future risks. By partnering with major employers, Ancora is proving that investing in preventative health data yields massive ROI in productivity and long-term wellness.
