ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates – Abu Dhabi’s massive investments in healthcare and technology make it a prime market for “patient-centric” healthcare startups looking to reach new markets, according to venture capital investor Isaac Applbaum.

The cofounder and general partner of MizMaa Ventures, an early-stage deep tech fund with headquarters in Tel Aviv and offices in San Francisco and Hong Kong, said he is looking at what portfolio companies can “leverage the high quality of care and the high quality of technology, so I’m going to look at things that are patient-centric” to introduce to Abu Dhabi. 

“I’ve been investing in the region for a very long time. If I may just say, with the Abraham Accords, things have just opened up in an extraordinary way,” he said. 

Applbaum, speaking at the Forbes Middle East Healthcare Summit in Abu Dhabi, said in the current risk environment founders must get products to market as fast as possible.

“Particularly in the digital health space, and the device space, and in healthcare, understanding how you get your product to market as quickly as possible, how you solve problems that aren’t 100 years away, but are actually solvable problems now,” he said.

“It’s really important: you need to be capital efficient… how you’re going to make your money back becomes way more important than it ever was, because it’s much more difficult.”