In the runup to Blueprint Health’s demo day this afternoon, released some fundraising news from some portfolio companies that graduated from earlier classes. The companies span big data, practice management and patient engagement — three of the top 10 most active healthcare subsectors for dealflow so far in 2014, according to a report by StartUp Health published this week.
Procured Health helps hospitals buy medical devices more competitively by aggregating information on these devices such as product reviews, prices and ordering. Hospitals pay a subscription for the service. It closed a $4 million Series A round. It is also working with 100 healthcare facilities such as Vanderbilt and HCA.
RubiconMD closed a $1 million + seed round for its business which seeks to reduce what it sees as “poorly timed” or unnecessary referrals and reduce the no-shows that take up valuable space in doctors’ scheduling books. It has signed contracts with direct primary care groups across seven
states.
ProofPilot closed a Series A for its Software as a Service to speed up the launch of clinical trials for pharma, biotech and medical device companies and making those trials easier to manage.
It works mainly with principal investigators, but also collaborates with outcomes agencies to assess consumer behavior. It charges a monthly subscription fee based on the complexity of studies.
Healthify closed its seed round. the company developed a screening tool to identify social and behavioral needs among health insurers’ member. It has won $200,000 in grants and inked deals with UnitedHealthcare and Johns Hopkins.
Artemis Health Analytics, which developed a Meaningful Use attestation dashboard, closed a $1.2 million seed round.
Digital health company funding has been gaining momentum, but StartUp Health projects that it has nearly doubled in the first three quarters of 2014 to $5 billion across 347 companies. That’s a lot more than Rock Health’s analysis which projects companies have raised $3 billion.
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.
In the third quarter alone, $1.7 billion went into 111 deals compared with $946 million across 156 deals for the same timeframe last year. Deal sizes for digital health companies are also increasing. An average of $2.6 million was raised in Seed and Series A rounds compared with $13.5 million for late stage companies.
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