The main objective of this paperwork is to examine the role that sensor start-ups can play in the healthcare industry, focusing on the way they interact with other players in the context of open innovation. To better identify the chances for start-ups to be involved in an acquisition by a corporate company operating in the field or in a collaboration with sanitary structures, a general overview of the Italian national health system was carried out. From this analysis it emerged that in this sector there are many opportunities for open innovation, which have been listed and categorized. In order to propose some examples of start-ups that could be involved in one of the possible forms of collaboration and acquisitions, firstly we had to frame the Italian panorama of start-ups and PMIs' operating in the sensor industry.