Seven gold standards, seven female founders
With over forty years’ experience in medical technology, Carmen van Vilsteren knows better than anyone what it takes to turn a good idea into an innovation that helps patients worldwide. She has worked on products used in hospitals across the globe, helped build MedTech start-ups, driven forward public-private partnerships in healthcare innovation, and was named Fe+male Tech Hero of the Year in 2025. She is now channelling that experience into a new ambition: to contribute to seven medical innovations that have the potential to become international standards.
Van Vilsteren is deliberately doing this with female founders. Not as a separate diversity issue, but out of the conviction that much potential remains untapped in the financing and development of medical technology. “I only invest in female CEOs,” she says. “Because it’s necessary.”
Seven instances of global impact
Her decision to focus on female CEOs did not come out of the blue. Van Vilsteren points to the skewed distribution of capital: whilst 38 per cent of entrepreneurs in the Netherlands are women, only 0.7 per cent of venture capital goes to female tech founders. “Zero point seven,” she emphasises. “That’s why I only invest in women.”
For her, this is not just a matter of fairness. Above all, she sees a market that is missing out on opportunities: talent, experience and entrepreneurship that all too often remain out of the picture. Anyone who wants better healthcare innovation must also take a closer look at who has access to capital, networks and trust.
Her portfolio now includes nearly fifteen female founders, ranging from their twenties to their seventies. Their companies differ greatly from one another, but have one thing in common: they focus on areas of healthcare where there is still much to be gained. These include diagnostics, robotics for microsurgery, regenerative materials for breast reconstruction, hormone tests relating to pregnancy and depression, and reusable surgical gowns.
The common thread is not a single technology, but a single question: what problem are you solving that is not yet being adequately addressed? For Van Vilsteren, that is the crux of the matter. Technology alone is never enough. An innovation must be clinically relevant, practically applicable and, ultimately, make a difference to patients.
More than just money
Van Vilsteren prefers to get involved at an early stage, often as the first investor. In doing so, she brings not only capital but also credibility. An early investment from someone who knows the sector can open doors for a founder to follow-on funding, partners and new opportunities.
One example is ShanX, a company developing a new diagnostic test. Van Vilsteren was the first to invest; the company subsequently raised 24 million euros in follow-on funding. For her, this demonstrates the impact of early support: an initial investment is not an end in itself, but a springboard to the next phase.
Van Vilsteren is not a hands-off investor. She coaches, contributes ideas and opens up her network whenever it is needed. Her approach is personal and practical. “I have a toolbox in my head and in my back pocket,” she says.
That toolbox is packed with experience gained from large companies, start-ups, research institutions and policy networks. Moreover, her network extends beyond the region. At TU/e, she was Director of the Strategic Area Health, a role through which she was closely connected to the knowledge base underpinning healthcare innovation. As the former figurehead of the Top Sector Life Sciences & Health, she brought together science, the business community and public-private partnerships on a national scale. She knows how different it is to sit at the table representing Philips compared to representing a young start-up. And she knows just how much a CEO has to deal with as soon as a MedTech company moves towards clinical trials, funding or market launch.
That’s why she takes a practical approach. Founders ring her when they get stuck. Often, strategy and practice become intertwined: what’s the sensible next step? Who should you speak to? How do you prepare for clinical validation? And how do you keep going in a process that can take years?
Why Brainport in particular?
In MedTech, in particular, the environment in which a company grows is of crucial importance. A medical innovation requires not only a good idea, but also engineers, doctors, researchers, investors, manufacturing partners and people who understand how a hospital works. Especially now that the healthcare sector is under pressure from rising costs and staff shortages, there is a growing need for innovations that help patients more effectively and contribute to affordable, deliverable care.
According to Van Vilsteren, Brainport is in a strong position to achieve this. Thanks to the technical heritage of companies such as Philips, ASML, DAF and the NatLab, a wealth of expertise is readily available locally. She herself has helped to build this up, notably at e/MTIC, where universities, hospitals and the business community collaborate to bring healthcare innovations into practice more quickly.
For her, this is precisely where the region’s strength lies: the combination of technology, clinical practice and entrepreneurship. This is crucial for MedTech. Success is not determined by the invention alone, but by whether an innovation can also be validated, produced and applied. According to Van Vilsteren, these worlds truly come together in Brainport. “You have common ground, a common language,” she says. “You can help someone straight away.”
The power of a phone call
That is precisely why, years ago, she set up a peer group for MedTech CEOs in the Eindhoven region. When she herself was CEO of Microsure, a TU/e spin-off developing robotic surgery, she realised just how many practical questions she was faced with. At Philips, there’s a department for almost everything. In a start-up, you have to figure everything out for yourself.
Take, for example, insurance for a clinical trial involving the first patients. Where do you start if you’ve never done it before? Which insurer understands such a process? What terms and conditions are reasonable? It took her a great deal of time to sort that out back then.
In a good peer group, things work differently. “Ask the same question today,” she says, “and you’ll get a response in no time. Someone will congratulate you on the clinical trial. Someone else will say: ‘Give me a ring; I did this last year.’ A third person will ask if they can listen in, because they’ll need to organise the same thing in six months’ time.”
That’s the ecosystem at work on a small scale: entrepreneurs who trust one another and offer practical support.
“The key question is: do you want to help someone else – yes or no?”
That first peer group still exists today. Van Vilsteren has since helped set up several similar groups. Deliberately small-scale: trust and openness disappear as soon as a group becomes too large or competitors are too close to one another. It is precisely in that private setting that entrepreneurs can share what is really going on: funding, staff, clinical steps, uncertainties and mistakes.
Growth potential in women’s health
Van Vilsteren sees Brainport as a region where knowledge, experience and entrepreneurship come together. That is precisely why she sees growth potential in areas where questions currently remain unanswered.
Women’s health is a key example. For a long time, much medical knowledge was based on the male body. Symptoms and clinical presentations of cardiovascular diseases often manifest differently in women than in men. Women, for example, can develop a different form of heart failure, in which small blood vessels constrict. “Now we know this,” says Van Vilsteren. “But we don’t yet have a solution.”
The fact that such questions remained overlooked for so long is also linked to who is involved in the discussions, decision-making and action. According to Van Vilsteren, female founders are still too often not automatically given a seat at the table. And that has consequences. Not only for who gains access to capital, networks and trust, but also for which questions are even asked in the first place.
For Van Vilsteren, this underlines why MedTech must not be solely technology-driven. The starting point must be the patient. “Technology can do anything,” she says. “But that’s precisely why you need to look more closely: who are we developing for, from whose perspective, and what might we be overlooking as a result?”
This is precisely where an opportunity lies for Brainport. In a region where technology, healthcare and entrepreneurship converge so closely, different perspectives can more quickly lead to innovations that make a real difference. If more talent gains access to capital, knowledge and networks, the ecosystem can grow and healthcare issues that currently remain unaddressed can be resolved more quickly.
In ten years’ time
Ask Van Vilsteren where she wants to be in ten years’ time, and she immediately returns to her ambition: seven gold standards, achieved with seven women. Innovations that are used worldwide and make a real difference in practice.
She can picture it clearly: diagnostics that become widely applicable, technology that helps women earlier in relation to pregnancy and perinatal depression, and solutions that give doctors better options and help patients move forward more quickly. Thinking big, but starting small: with one founder, one investment, one question and one phone call to someone who can help.
That is precisely where the promise of Brainport MedTech lies. Global impact often begins close to home, in a region where knowledge, experience and entrepreneurship can reinforce one another. For Van Vilsteren, this is not a distant vision, but everyday reality. And that is exactly what she continues to build upon.