From Innovation to Adoption: What HRC 2026 Reveals About Catalonia’s Digital Health Scale-Up Challenge

Catalonia’s digital health ecosystem has entered a new stage of maturity. The next challenge is no longer only building better health technology, but scaling the teams, trust and go-to-market capabilities that can bring innovation into real healthcare environments.

By Charlotte Rovito
VP Growth, IKIGAI Talent Group

The strongest signal from Health Revolution Congress 2026 was not simply the number of digital health solutions on display. It was the maturity of the conversation around them.

The sector no longer feels like an ecosystem trying to justify why digital health matters. That stage is increasingly behind us. The more relevant question now is different: how does innovation become adoption, how does adoption become trust, and how does trust become scalable growth?

For Catalonia, that question arrives at a decisive moment.

According to ACCIÓ’s Digital Health in Catalonia technology snapshot, the Catalan digital health ecosystem now includes 419 companies, generates €652 million in revenue and supports more than 5,300 jobs. More than half of these companies are startups, and 65% already incorporate artificial intelligence into their products or services.

Presented at HRC 2026 by Inma Rodriguez, Market Intelligence Manager at ACCIÓ, the study offered a clear snapshot of a maturing ecosystem: more companies, stronger technological adoption and a growing role for artificial intelligence across Catalonia’s digital health sector.

Those figures are important. But the deeper reading is not only that the sector is growing. It is that Catalonia’s digital health market is moving from promise to execution.

HRC 2026 was a market signal, not just an industry event

The Health Revolution Congress has become one of Europe’s key meeting points for digital health. Its value is not only in gathering startups, hospitals, investors, technology providers and institutions. Its value is in making visible the pressure points of the market.

From IKIGAI Talent Group’s perspective at HRC 2026, three signals stood out.

First, artificial intelligence is no longer a peripheral topic in health innovation. It is becoming part of the operating infrastructure of the sector. Second, the conversation around digital health is increasingly linked to implementation: clinical integration, data security, adoption, reimbursement, patient experience and go-to-market. Third, the companies that will lead the next phase will not be those with technology alone, but those able to build the teams that can take that technology into complex healthcare environments.

This distinction matters. A strong product can open attention. A strong team converts that attention into market access, trust and growth.

Catalonia is no longer an emerging digital health ecosystem

The Catalan market has the characteristics of an ecosystem entering a scale-up phase.

It has a growing base of companies. It has research centres, hospitals, accelerators, universities and public initiatives. It has international attention. It has foreign investment. It has a strong entrepreneurial layer. And, increasingly, it has companies whose ambition is not only local validation, but international expansion.

ACCIÓ identifies Catalonia as the leading region in Europe for foreign technology investment in the healthcare sector by number of projects and invested capital between 2021 and 2025. The same report places Catalonia among the leading global regions for healthcare technology foreign investment.

This context changes the question for HealthTech and MedTech companies operating from Barcelona and the wider Catalan ecosystem. The challenge is no longer only to prove that the region can produce innovation. The challenge is to scale that innovation with enough precision to compete in healthcare markets where trust, evidence and commercial execution are difficult to separate.

That is where talent becomes strategic.

In an early-stage market, hiring often follows urgency: build the product, validate the technology, get the first clients, close the first pilots. In a maturing market, the hiring problem becomes more structural. Companies need leadership, product maturity, AI and data capability, regulatory understanding, clinical credibility and go-to-market teams able to work across long sales cycles and complex stakeholders.

Digital health does not scale like generic software. It scales through healthcare systems, physicians, procurement teams, payers, patients, data governance frameworks and clinical workflows. That requires a different talent architecture.

AI in health is moving from narrative to operating requirement

One of the clearest market shifts is the acceleration of artificial intelligence in health.

In Catalonia, 271 digital health companies already incorporate AI into their products or services, representing 65% of the sector. The applications range from clinical tools and diagnostics to patient monitoring, medical decision support, digital therapies, simulation, robotics, prevention, marketplaces and technology consulting.

This is not a minor change. When AI adoption becomes widespread, it stops being a differentiator by itself. The differentiator moves elsewhere: into the quality of the data, the clinical relevance of the use case, the capacity to validate the model, the ability to integrate it into existing workflows and the credibility of the team bringing it to market.

Recent public examples from Barcelona’s ecosystem show this clearly.

Biorce, a Barcelona-based HealthTech company applying AI to clinical trials, has attracted significant Series A funding and positioned its platform around the optimisation of trial design and execution. Sycai Medical, founded in Barcelona, uses AI to support early detection of abdominal cancers and premalignant lesions, with a device designed to integrate into medical imaging workflows.

These companies represent different parts of the same movement: AI is not only being discussed as a technological trend; it is being built into clinical, operational and commercial models.

The implications for hiring are considerable.

AI-driven HealthTech companies need more than AI engineers. They need product leaders who understand clinical environments, data specialists who understand healthcare constraints, regulatory profiles who can navigate medical device pathways, commercial leaders who can sell into complex healthcare systems, and customer-facing teams who can translate technical value into trust.

In this context, the talent question becomes more precise: not “do we need AI profiles?”, but “what combination of technical, clinical, regulatory and go-to-market capabilities will allow this AI solution to be adopted?”

The market is rewarding solutions that can move closer to adoption

One of the strongest impressions from HRC 2026 was that visibility alone is no longer enough.

The companies that attracted attention were not simply presenting technology. They were trying to prove readiness: readiness for pilots, partnerships, funding, clinical validation, commercial expansion or integration into existing healthcare structures.

The recognition of Doole Health during the Digital Health Innovation Competition at HRC 2026 captured that transition well. The moment was not only a celebration of one company. It reflected the broader role of the congress as a place where startups are tested against market expectations: investors, hospitals, corporates, technology partners and innovation teams are all looking for signals of viability.

Those signals are increasingly practical. Can the solution be implemented? Can it be trusted? Can it fit into clinical operations? Can it move beyond a pilot? Can the company build the commercial and technical structure required to scale?

That is also why companies such as Top Doctors remain relevant reference points in the Catalan digital health conversation. They illustrate a more mature layer of the ecosystem, where the challenge is not only digital access to healthcare, but depth of service, patient trust, operational reliability and sustained market presence.

A maturing ecosystem needs both types of companies: the emerging startups proving new categories, and the more consolidated players showing what scale, trust and market continuity can look like.

In HealthTech, go-to-market is also a trust-building discipline

HealthTech and MedTech companies often operate with an understandable bias towards evidence. Clinical data, safety, ROI, compliance and performance matter. They should matter. In healthcare, weak claims can have consequences far beyond commercial inefficiency.

But HRC also reminded us of something that technical markets sometimes underestimate: trust is not built only through data. It is also built through experience, clarity, memory and human connection.

“We obsess over clinical data, QALY, ROI. Rightly so. But our physicians, payers, and procurement directors? They’re human too.”

Myriam Bougo,
Principal Consultant MedTech | Go-To-Market & Growth Strategist at InnHealthium

That distinction matters for HealthTech and MedTech companies entering a scale-up phase. Evidence remains essential, but adoption also depends on how clearly a solution is explained, how much risk it reduces for each stakeholder and how much trust the team behind it is able to build.

In MedTech and HealthTech, go-to-market does not work only by presenting a solution. It works by helping different stakeholders believe that a new technology can be understood, trusted, implemented and defended internally.

That requires a specific kind of commercial talent.

The strongest sales and growth profiles in this market are not simply sellers. They are translators. They understand technology, but also clinical pressure. They understand product value, but also procurement friction. They understand evidence, but also timing, stakeholder mapping and organisational adoption.

As the digital health market matures, this ability to translate innovation into confidence will become one of the most valuable go-to-market capabilities.

The next bottleneck will be talent

ACCIÓ’s report identifies several challenges for digital health in Catalonia: scaling technology providers, enabling secondary use of healthcare data, ensuring accessibility, managing talent and adapting to change, and expanding the availability of notified bodies.

These are not isolated challenges. They are connected by a common thread: execution capacity.

A company can have strong technology and still struggle to scale if it lacks the right leadership. It can have promising AI and still fail to gain adoption if it lacks clinical credibility. It can have investor interest and still lose momentum if it does not build a go-to-market team that understands healthcare buying processes. It can have a validated solution and still move too slowly if product, regulatory, data and commercial functions are not aligned.

For HealthTech and MedTech companies, talent strategy is therefore not a support function. It is part of the scale-up strategy.

The most critical profiles will not be limited to one function. The next stage of digital health will require:

• AI, data and engineering profiles able to build robust, secure and clinically relevant products.
• Product leaders who understand healthcare workflows, user adoption and regulatory complexity.
• Regulatory and quality specialists capable of helping companies move through medical device and compliance requirements.
• Go-to-market and sales leaders with experience in long-cycle, trust-based healthcare environments.
• Customer success and implementation profiles able to support adoption after the first contract or pilot.
• Executive leaders who can connect technology, clinical value, financing and international expansion.

The companies that build these capabilities early will have an advantage. Not because they will hire more people, but because they will hire with a clearer understanding of what the next phase demands.

What HRC 2026 ultimately revealed

HRC 2026 showed an ecosystem with ambition, capital, technology and international visibility. But it also showed that the next chapter will be harder than the previous one.

Building a digital health product is difficult. Scaling one into healthcare systems is harder.

The second phase requires evidence, but also narrative. Technology, but also trust. Funding, but also execution. AI, but also governance. Commercial ambition, but also clinical sensitivity. Above all, it requires teams capable of operating at the intersection of all these forces.

That is the market signal HealthTech and MedTech companies should take seriously.

Catalonia has already proved that it can generate digital health innovation. The next question is which companies will be able to turn that innovation into adoption, market access and sustainable growth.

For companies preparing for the next stage

The next phase of digital health will not be defined only by stronger technology. It will be defined by the teams capable of bringing that technology into real healthcare environments, earning trust and scaling with precision.

For HealthTech and MedTech companies navigating that transition, talent strategy becomes part of the growth strategy.

If your company is preparing for its next stage of scale, you can book a strategic conversation with Charlotte Rovito, VP Growth at IKIGAI Talent Group, to assess which leadership, technical and go-to-market profiles will be critical to turn innovation into adoption and growth.

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Sources consulted

• ACCIÓ, Generalitat de Catalunya: Digital Health in Catalonia. May 2026 Technology Snapshot.
• Health Revolution Congress 2026 materials and IKIGAI Talent Group observations from the event.
• Public reporting on Biorce’s Series A funding and AI platform for clinical trials.
• Public reporting on Sycai Medical’s AI-based cancer detection technology and funding round.
• IKIGAI Talent Group’s previous analysis of relevant companies in the Catalan digital health ecosystem, including Top Doctors.