Your Ultimate Guide to the NYC Health Tech Scene
New York has become one of the most important health tech hubs in the country.
The city has some obvious advantages: world-class health systems and universities, a huge concentration of healthcare and financial talent, one of the deepest venture capital ecosystems in the world, and a growing list of health tech companies that have reached billion-dollar valuations or gone public.
But the ecosystem can also be hard to navigate. If you’re a founder, investor, student, operator, or just someone trying to break into health tech, where do you actually start?
Here is my guide to the NYC health tech scene: the companies to know, programs to consider, communities to join, investors to meet, and events worth putting on your calendar.
The NYC health tech companies to know
I’m intentionally not trying to list every health tech startup headquartered in New York. There are hundreds. Instead, these are some of the companies that have become important parts of the NYC health tech ecosystem, whether because of their size, funding, longevity, or influence:
K Health — Uses technology and AI to provide virtual primary and urgent care and other healthcare services.
Maven Clinic — A virtual clinic focused on women’s and family health, spanning fertility, pregnancy, parenting, menopause, and other areas of care.
Medallion — Builds software to automate medical licensing, credentialing, enrollment, and other administrative work for healthcare organizations.
Nomad Health — A healthcare staffing marketplace connecting clinicians with temporary and travel healthcare jobs.
Noom — Built one of the best-known consumer digital health brands around behavior change and weight management and has since expanded into clinical obesity care.
Nourish — A virtual nutrition care platform connecting patients with registered dietitians, with a model built heavily around insurance coverage.
Oscar Health — One of the original NYC health tech success stories. Founded in 2012, Oscar built a technology-first health insurer and went public in 2021.
Pearl Health — Builds technology and services that help primary care physicians participate in value-based care.
Progyny — A fertility, family-building, and women’s health benefits company serving employers and health plans. Progyny went public in 2019 and has grown to more than 600 clients covering 7.2 million lives.
Ro — A direct-to-consumer healthcare company that started with Roman and expanded into obesity, fertility, sexual health, dermatology, and other areas of care.
Spring Health — An employer-focused mental health platform offering therapy, coaching, psychiatry, and other behavioral health services. It has grown into one of NYC’s most valuable private digital health companies.
Talkspace — A pioneer in virtual mental healthcare and one of the relatively small number of digital health startups to become a publicly traded company.
Thirty Madison — Built condition-specific healthcare brands including Keeps and Nurx and helped popularize the idea of building specialized virtual healthcare companies around particular conditions.
Thyme Care — A value-based cancer care company that helps patients navigate treatment while working with providers and health plans to improve outcomes and reduce costs.
Tomorrow Health — A technology platform designed to make it easier for patients, providers, suppliers, and health plans to coordinate home-based care.
Unite Us — Builds technology that connects healthcare organizations with community-based services addressing needs such as food, housing, and transportation.
Valera Health — A virtual mental healthcare company providing therapy, psychiatry, and other behavioral health services.
Vori Health — A virtual musculoskeletal care company combining medical care, physical therapy, coaching, and other services.
Zocdoc — One of the granddaddies of NYC digital health. Founded in 2007, Zocdoc built the online marketplace for finding and booking doctors.
And this is far from exhaustive. Other NYC companies worth knowing include Alma, Pearl Health, Cadence, Click Therapeutics, K Health, Nomad Health, Unite Us, Thyme Care, Chapter, Tomorrow Health, Medallion, Valera Health, Vori Health, Dandy, and Nourish.
NYC is no longer home to just a handful of successful digital health companies! There is now a real talent flywheel where employees of one generation of companies go on to start and fund the next.
Where to study digital health in NYC
One of NYC’s biggest advantages is the density of universities and medical schools sitting within a few subway stops of one another.
Columbia Business School
I’m biased here because I teach at Columbia Business School, but CBS has built one of the deepest healthcare business curricula of any business school. The school’s Healthcare and Pharmaceutical Management Program offers courses across healthcare delivery, health IT, biopharma, medical devices, policy, entrepreneurship, and investing.
That includes my course, Investing in Digital Health Startups, where students learn how to evaluate early-stage digital health companies as venture investors. We cover everything from market size and business models to unit economics, scalability, defensibility, founders, and venture returns. Students ultimately put those frameworks to work evaluating real startups.
Other relevant CBS courses include Applying Healthcare IT and Digital Health, Healthcare Venture Capital and Private Equity: HCIT and Services, Investing in Medical Technology, and Healthcare Management, Design, and Strategy.
➔ Columbia Business School Healthcare and Pharmaceutical Management Program
NYU
NYU also has a substantial healthcare ecosystem spanning Stern, NYU Langone, and the broader university.
NYU Stern launched its Healthcare Initiative in 2025 and now offers more than 30 healthcare-focused courses, along with fellowships, research, networking, and entrepreneurship programs. NYU Langone also operates a Health Tech Hub that connects startups and researchers with clinical, technology, and innovation resources.
➔ NYU Stern Healthcare Initiative
Mount Sinai
Mount Sinai has developed its own health innovation ecosystem through the Discovery & Innovation Hub. Its programs include training, mentorship, founder programming, pitch competitions, and an incubator for early-stage healthcare companies. There’s also the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health, which leads research programs and machine learning efforts focused on improving the ability to diagnose and treat patients.
For people coming from medicine rather than business, this is an important part of the NYC ecosystem because it provides a bridge between clinical training and entrepreneurship.
➔ Mount Sinai Discovery & Innovation Hub
➔ Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health at Mount Sinai
Cornell Tech
Cornell Tech has a dedicated Health Tech program at its graduate campus on Roosevelt Island. The Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute offers a two-year dual Master of Science degree with a concentration in Health Tech, combining technical training with healthcare and entrepreneurship.
Students study topics including digital and mobile health, healthcare delivery, health data and systems, clinical decision-making, machine learning, and human-computer interaction, alongside startup funding, product management, and entrepreneurship. The program also partners with Weill Cornell Medicine, giving students opportunities to work on real healthcare problems with physicians and other healthcare experts.
➔ The Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute (Health Tech)
Weill Cornell Medicine
Weill Cornell Medicine is home to the Institute of Artificial Intelligence for Digital Health, which brings together researchers across medicine, data science, and engineering to develop and apply AI to patient care and clinical research. Its work spans areas including machine learning, computational medicine, medical imaging, clinical decision support, and precision health.
The Institute also helps connect the academic and clinical sides of Weill Cornell with New York’s broader technology ecosystem, making it an important hub for anyone interested in the intersection of AI, medicine, and digital health.
➔ Institute of Artificial Intelligence for Digital Health (AIDH) at Weill Cornell Medicine
Communities, clubs, and meetups
You do not need to enroll in graduate school to get plugged into NYC health tech. Here are some great groups and events open to everyone:
Cornell Tech Health Tech Hub — Brings together researchers, students, entrepreneurs, clinicians, and industry leaders around healthcare technology, with events and programming at Cornell Tech’s Roosevelt Island campus.
Cure. — Affiliated with Deerfield Management, Cure’s Park Avenue South campus brings together healthcare startups, investors, scientists, and larger healthcare organizations and regularly hosts events.
Digital Health New York (DHNY) — One of the best places to start. DHNY has built a large community of NYC health tech founders, operators, investors, and healthcare leaders and hosts events throughout the year, including its annual DHNY Summit.
Health2Tech — A health tech community that hosts networking events and gatherings for founders, investors, operators, and others working across healthcare and technology, including regular events in NYC.
HITLAB — The Healthcare Innovation and Technology Lab runs events and programming throughout the year and organizes NYC Health Innovation Week, a week of panels, meetups, workshops, networking events, and its Innovators Summit.
NYC digital health investors to know
New York also has an unusually strong combination of dedicated healthcare investors and major generalist venture firms with significant healthcare portfolios.
Able Partners — An NYC-based venture firm investing at the intersection of health and wellbeing, with a particular focus on companies improving people's everyday lives.
Aegis Ventures — A NYC-based venture studio that partners with health systems and entrepreneurs to build and scale healthcare companies, with a particular focus on AI and technology-enabled healthcare.
AlleyCorp Healthcare — One of NYC’s most active early-stage healthcare investors. Its physician-led team invests at the incubation, pre-seed, and seed stages and has backed or incubated companies including Maven, Pearl Health, Thyme Care, Nomad Health, Diana Health, and Chamber Cardio.
BoxGroup — A NYC-based early-stage fund that invests across sectors but has built a significant healthcare portfolio, backing companies including Ro, Oscar Health, Headway, and Tomorrow Health.
Deerfield Management — A healthcare-focused investment firm based in NYC that invests across therapeutics, medical devices, healthcare services, and technology. Deerfield manages more than $16 billion and invests across both private and public companies.
Lux Capital — A NYC and Silicon Valley venture firm known for investing in science and deep technology, with a substantial healthcare and life sciences portfolio spanning biotech, diagnostics, AI, and healthcare technology.
Oak HC/FT — A major healthcare and fintech investor founded by Annie Lamont, Andrew Adams, and Patricia Kemp. The firm invests from seed through growth and has backed healthcare companies including Maven Clinic, Devoted Health, Ambience Healthcare, and Main Street Health.
Primary Venture Partners — A NYC-focused seed investor with a significant healthcare portfolio. Primary has backed companies including Alma, K Health, Inspiren, and Tokaido Health.
Thrive Capital — A NYC-based venture firm that invests across sectors and stages and has backed some of the biggest technology companies to emerge from the city, including several important healthcare companies.
Town Hall Ventures — A healthcare-focused NYC fund founded by Andy Slavitt and David Whelan that invests in companies tackling some of the healthcare system’s most difficult problems, particularly for underserved populations. Its portfolio includes Cityblock Health, Thyme Care, Curana Health, and other care-delivery businesses.
Union Square Ventures — One of NYC’s best-known venture firms. While USV is a generalist investor rather than a dedicated healthcare fund, it has backed health and healthcare companies including Thirty Madison and Nurx and is an important part of the broader NYC startup ecosystem.
Check out our full digital health investor database here and our list of corporate healthcare VC here.
New York City has an energy like no other
New York City has always had many of the ingredients needed to build great healthcare companies: some of the best hospitals and universities in the world, a massive healthcare workforce, deep pools of capital, and talent from industries ranging from technology and finance to media and consumer brands.
What has changed is the density. There are now enough health tech companies, founders, investors, operators, students, researchers, and repeat entrepreneurs here that it feels like a real community.
And that’s ultimately why I wanted to put this guide together. If you’re building, investing, studying, or looking for your next job in health tech in NYC, I hope this makes it a little easier to find your people and get involved.
And if I missed a company, investor, program, or community that belongs here, let me know. I’d love to keep adding to this guide.
