Health IT, Startups

Digital health investing: Looking back and forecasting the future

In the closing keynote of the Digital Health Summit at CES, Wainwright Fishburn, global head of Cooley's digital health practice, discussed the past and future of digital health investing.

investment, dollar, money

Just like that, the Digital Health Summit at CES is over.

Though brief, the closing keynote touched on one of the most talked about aspects of the space: funding. Wainwright Fishburn, a founding partner of Cooley’s San Diego office and global head of the firm’s digital health practice, discussed the past and future of digital health investing.

Fishburn opened his presentation with a broad overview via a financing snapshot. Back in 2010, digital health raked in about $1.2 billion in funding. By comparison, 2017 saw $11.5 billion in funding across sectors. Quite a difference.

Last year also contained an uptick in Series C and D deals, as well as some crucial guidance from the FDA.

Digging deeper, Fishburn went into detail about a number of sectors of the digital health space, including:

  • Consumer health information
  • Consumer engagement
  • Telemedicine
  • EHR/clinical workflow
  • Enterprise wellness
  • Analytics/big data
  • Genomics and sequencing
  • Population health
  • Wearables/biosensing
  • Remote patient monitoring
  • Regulated devices
  • Digital therapies

Companies in these spaces are, through various means, all focused on the same goal: “making healthcare accessible, maintaining the quality but slaying the cost,” Fishburn said.

Since 2012, the number of startups raising millions of dollars has rapidly expanded. And venture capital players like F-Prime, GE Ventures, 500 Startups, Y Combinator, Biomatics Capital and others are actively investing in these companies’ solutions.

When compared to 2012, other factors saw less speedy growth. “Interestingly, 2017 was a little slower year for M&A,” Fishburn noted.

Still, payer consolidation plays a role in changing digital health. And the FDA approved 51 connected health products last year.

Fishburn didn’t only share comments on the past. He had a few thoughts on the future of digital health funding as well.

He predicts that regulatory guidelines will play a continued role in the ecosystem and that global genomics will drive change. Additionally, Fishburn believes market adoption of digital therapies is next on the list.

Photo: Auris, Getty Images

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