“We are a young company, but with an old soul,” says the co-founder and president of Zerintia HealthTech, Joaquín Fernández de Piérola. The company was founded in 2023, although the underlying technology has been in development for 10 years, he explains. As is the case with much of the start-upswas born from a need: “In 2019, Vodafone Spain committed to launching the world’s first remotely assisted operation with 5G at the Mobile World Congress. They would have broadcast it with a Japanese enabling platform that they were unable to adapt to their needs.” They then identified 4Remote, a tool from one of the company’s partners used in the industrial sector to connect remotely. wearable and machines to resolve production incidents. “And in three months we adapted it and put into production the beta version of 4RemoteHealth, the basis of the platform we market today,” he continues.
After the success of that first operation through 5G, they decided to create “a robust, scalable and marketable platform”. And Covid gave them wings thanks to the push it gave to the adoption of medical telepresence technologies, which help alleviate stress on healthcare systems, recalls the entrepreneur. It partnered with Kepa Sagastabeitia, creator of the technology, and César Rodríguez to create Zerintia HealthTech, a technology enabler that securely connects clinical spaces to make medical decisions in real time and from anywhere. It is installed in operating rooms, intensive care units, ambulances and is also used to train healthcare workers without the need for travel. Thanks to augmented reality you can point, write or paint on images.
“The same technology can be transferred to other areas, such as home monitoring of critical patients, as we did at Manresa Hospital, where admissions to emergency services, offices or second level hospitals were reduced by 80%,” says Fernández de Piérola.
The company’s vocation is global. Although their first customers were Spanish hospitals like Manresa (where they reduced hospital visits by 70% with their tool). They went from two or three customers to 15 in Spain in the first year and went abroad with distribution agreements or partnerships. Today they have 8 deals in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Chile, Peru, Colombia and 12 more are on the way by the end of the year or early 2026, according to Fernández Piérola.
In El Salvador they have just won a project to digitize the new Rosales hospital and install their technology in eight operating rooms that will have medical telepresence. They also won a project to connect 150 ambulances with Romania’s emergency control center. And they are part of an international consortium that chooses to create 12 field hospitals in Ukraine, where their platform will be installed so that doctors external to the defense operations scenario can provide recommendations to internal ones, which does not always cover all specialties, he appreciates.
Furthermore, they are applying to expand the services of the Gómez Ulla Hospital in Madrid, they have joined the teleambulance projects of SUMA 112 and other organizations to connect with the center where patients are received quickly, carry out triage and be able to save human lives, says the president, who underlines that the platform contributes to relaxing healthcare systems by being able to have professionals where they are needed without the need for presence.
Growth
In 2023 they closed the first 10 months of activity with a turnover of 130,000 euros, in 2024 they multiplied that figure by three and in 2025 they plan to do so again up to one million euros. Of course now 80% of that figure comes from abroad. “We have a conservative plan to bring the company to exceed 20 million euros in five years with our subscription technology, which is like a growing snowball. We want to be one of the global players in telemedicine,” says the president of the company, with 7 people on the payroll and 25 external collaborators.
After the capital increases of 1.8 million subscribed in 2023 and 2024 by the CDTI venture capital funds Noso Capital and Invierte, Fernández de Piérola plans to launch another round of financing for 2.5 or 3 million euros which will allow the company to reach breakeven or equalize.
