Medicaid chief medical officer Andrey Ostrovsky said that entrepreneurs and investors are overlooking one massive population – low-income Americans who qualify for Medicaid.

He said that was daft as new funds are available for those that are bringing IT innovation to the space.

"My gut is that it's a big opportunity with $500 billion in federal spend every year in a system that hasn't evolved technologically much since 1965. There are unicorns sitting in there," he added.

Ostrovsky said he grew up in project housing in Baltimore, Maryland. His family was reliant on Medicaid for three years.

These days, he spends a lot of time thinking about how he got out of the projects and become a successful doctor, while many of his childhood friends did not. And he regularly takes his five-year-old son to homeless shelters to "interact with fellow human beings who have the cards stacked up against them".

He said that the health technology sector is booming, with investors pouring $4.2 billion into the space last year alone.

But only a tiny fraction of these technologies are targeted to disadvantaged communities.