Jul 2
2013
2013 Midyear Digital Health Funding from Rock Health
Rock Health, the healthcare startup incubator, released its 2013 midyear digital health funding, which shows continued and expansive growth of more than $849 million invested in 90 different companies, a jump of more than 12 percent more money and 25 percent more deal volume than this time last year.
For perspective, here’s a graph from Rock Health that puts the activity into perspective:
According to Rock Health, “digital health has been outpacing traditional healthcare, where investments have dropped precipitously. Medical device funding is down 29 percent and biotech is down 2 percent in the first quarter.”
Emerging themes of digital health investing in 2013 include:
- Remote Patient Monitoring: like iRhythm which makes a cardiac rhythm monitoring for patients with arrhythmia, and John Sculley’s Watermark Medical which diagnoses and treats sleep disorders at home.
- Analytics and Big Data: including Flatiron Health, Health Catalyst and Treato which use data to improve care delivery.
- Electronic Health Records: Axion Health, CareCloud, DocuTAP, RazorInsights, and Qpid Health, which are taking on the big guys and going into specialized areas, like urgent care.
- Wellness: products in this space target employers/payers (Keas, Linkwell, RedBrick) and consumers directly (Audax Health, EveryMove, FitStar) to encourage health and prevent illness.
- Personal Health Tools and Tracking: enable consumers to take charge of their health, like Basis, HealthTell,Medivo, and PatientsLikeMe.
Rock Health cites investors that were particularly active in the first half of 2013. Social+Capital Partnership led the way with five digital health investments, followed closely by Norwest Venture Partners. There were no co-investments by these two firms, demonstrative of a divergent focus in digital health investing. Overall, 146 unique investors participated in one to two deals each (there were only 92 firms investing this time last year).
Thirty-eight digital health campaigns raised more than $4.5 million across crowdfunding sites including Indiegogo, Kickstarter, Medstartr and Fundable thus far in 2013 (looking only at campaigns that have either closed or met their goal in 2013). The top six campaigns represented 75 percent of all crowdfunding dollars, with Scanadu’s medical tricorder taking the cake with more than $1.2 million.
Electronic health record companies, including Practice Fusion, Allscripts, Athenahealth and Cerner also were active with several acquisitions.