Asian healthcare deals heat up as investors bet big on brain tech and surgical robotics

Family offices and venture investors across Hong Kong and the wider region are reshaping portfolios to capture long-term biotech growth

Private investors in Asia, including family offices operating in Hong Kong, are showing a growing appetite for advanced medical technologies such as brain-computer interfaces and surgical robotics, as healthcare deal activity picks up across the region amid China’s biotechnology boom.

“Asia is ageing, so there’s a structural, long-term demand for better surgery and medicine,” said William Chow, deputy group CEO of Raffles Family Office, headquartered in Hong Kong and Singapore. “A lot of the innovation is happening right here in Asia.”

The number of healthcare private equity funds involved in Asia-Pacific deals nearly doubled to 129 in the first half of the year, up from 66 a year earlier, Bain & Company data released last week showed.

Globally, the healthcare private equity sector logged 184 buyout deals over the same period, while total disclosed deal value fell 18 per cent year on year to US$51 billion.

At Raffles Family Office, which manages about US$2 billion in assets, Chow said surgical robotics and brain-computer interfaces were coming up far more often than they did a couple of years ago.

In a panel discussion on Friday, Hu said AI adoption was moving from drug discovery into clinical use to enhance surgery workflows in hospitals. “That could be anything from placing sensors in our surgical tools, directly having real-time feedback to the surgeon or the doctor about the status of the disease, so that they can pivot or make different decisions,” he said.