Here’s even more evidence of the white-hot digital health market: a look at 2012 so far shows more companies are scoring larger investment deals in the space.
A new report by healthcare accelerator Rock Health that gathered all the digital health companies receiving at least $2 million in investment shows those deals are up 73 percent at this point compared to 2011. There’s been a total of $675 million in digital health investments through June, compared to $390 million at this point last year.
It’s not just the deals that are up but the companies, too. In all of 2011, 92 companies won at least $2 million in investment. So far in 2012, it’s at 68 — including last week’s $30 million deal with Valence Health.
Behavioral Health, Interoperability and eConsent: Meeting the Demands of CMS Final Rule Compliance
In a webinar on April 16 at 1pm ET, Aneesh Chopra will moderate a discussion with executives from DocuSign, Velatura, and behavioral health providers on eConsent, health information exchange and compliance with the CMS Final Rule on interoperability.
The report leverages data from Capital IQ, CrunchBase, the National Venture Capital Association and Rock Health’s own funding database, and defines digital health as companies at the intersection of technology and healthcare. So that covers everyone from a company like wireless health products company Fitbit to the personalized medicine company AssureRx.
And keep in mind the report and its dollar amounts don’t cover the millions in deals that have been done under the $2 million mark.
Four segments of digital health are getting the most attention: physician tools, sensors, home health and data/analytics. The fourth segment has had some of the biggest deals — the $100 million Castlight Health deal and the $50 million GoHealth investment.
What’s clear is that while this space continues to grow quickly, it’s even more likely to speed up as all sectors gain investor credibility. There is still significant skepticism about many segments of digital health by institutional investors. At the Kauffman Foundation’s Life Science Venture Summit this past weekend in San Francisco, Dana Mead from Kleiner Perkins said his fund remains skeptical around many deals in the space — particularly mobile health — for concerns over reimbursement and business models.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
