Healthcare venture capitalists are no fans of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the regulatory challenges the agency poses for medical startups and device companies.They blame many of the problems besetting healthcare investing squarely on the agency as delays caused by reviewers push investor pay day further out.But at the MedTechInvesting Conference in Minneapolis [...]

Few topics are as buzzed about in healthcare circles as mobile apps.Everyone’s moving toward smartphones, the population is aging and mobile apps can bring convenience, greater access and cost savings to the health system, according to the prevailing wisdom.And that’s probably all true.But it doesn’t mean venture investors are interested.One VC who doesn’t expect to [...]

Panelists at a venture capital forum enthusiastically endorsed accelerators as providing plenty of value for entrepreneurs ’ mentorship, networking, business connections and the like.But several VCs on the panel were less confident about what sort of benefit, if any, accelerators could offer them. Joe Cunningham, a managing director with Austin, Texas-based…

While venture capital investment in healthcare as a whole is apparently down to its lowest in five quarters, things are looking up for the folks in health IT.Continuing on a positive trend that started in the third quarter of 2011, the health IT sector drew strong interest from venture capitals in the first quarter of [...]

In the first quarter of 2012, dollars invested by venture capitalists in healthcare companies fell to the lowest total in five quarters.Venture capital investment in healthcare totaled $1.45 billion on 153 deals in the quarter, according to the latest quarterly report from venture capital database CB Insights. Healthcare deal activity fell 11 percent in the [...]

Good news for life science startups in Florida, Georgia, Virginia and other emerging hubs in the southeast U.S.: A large VC focusing its investments on information technology and healthcare is raising a new $125 million fund.Harbert Venture Partners is more than halfway to that goal, according to a recent filing with the U.S. Securities and [...]

In a functioning emerging med tech family, there is a healthy level of tension among the various stakeholders, each with a unique perspective on how best to grow the value of the company (and thus their stake in it). Sometimes, though, the incentives and motivations are in such opposition that value or even whole companies can be destroyed, or worse just limp along zombie-like in defiance of all logic.

Who says early stage life science ventures don’t have access to funding?GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE:GSK) and Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) are joining forces to form a $200 million fund with Index Ventures, Bloomberg News first reported. For London-based venture capital firm Index Ventures, the new fund is the firm’s first dedicated to the life sciences. Index Ventures [...]

Life science investment firm Emergent Medical Partners LP has raised nearly $70 million in a pooled investment fund over the past four-and-a-half years, according to two U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings on Thursday (here and here).The Portolo Valley, California firm led by medical device pioneer Dr. Thomas Fogarty (one of MedCity News readers’ choices [...]

Healthcare reform has changed how healthcare venture capitalists invest. Investment in early stage biotech and medical devices has plummeted since the recession, and investors have switched their focus to inventions that serve simpler functions like lowering operational costs at hospitals and helping hospitals keep patients from being re-admitted, a costly process that the health law [...]