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