Health IT venture funding soars to new highs in first half of 2017
Global venture capital funding for health IT and digital health companies rose to its highest level in any quarter, according to Mercom Capital Group, which tracks the ups and downs of these investments.
VC funding in the first half of 2017 set a record at 36 percent higher than the same period in 2016 and rose to $4 billion, up from $3 billion the year before. Mercom’s findings show $2.4 billion in 194 deals in Q2 2017 compared with $1.6 billion in 165 deals in Q1 2017.
Top categories in the first half of 2017 were: patient engagement companies with $684 million, data analytics companies with $458 million, mobile apps companies with $399 million, and healthcare appointments booking companies with $391 million.
“This was the best half and best quarter ever for digital health companies as a result of a few very large deals,” Raj Prabhu, CEO and co-founder of Mercom Capital Group, said in a statement. “We are now comfortably on pace to have the biggest funding year for digital health companies. Even with such robust funding, there is still no sign of any digital health IPOs and M&A activity is yet to catch up to the funding momentum.”
The top venture capital deals in Q2, 2017 were: $500 million raised by Outcome Health, $231 million raised by Modernizing Medicine, $140 million raised by PatientPoint, $90 million raised by Blink Health, $75 million raised by WuXi Nextcode, and $70 million raised by ClassPass.
A total of 454 investors including accelerator/incubators participated in funding deals in Q2 2017.
Mercom also pointed to some notable mergers and acquisitions that occurred in the first half of the year: Teladoc acquired Best Doctors for $440 million, Cochlear bought audiology practice software company Sycle for $78 million, athenahealth paid $63 million for Praxify and NextGen bought Entrada for $34 million.
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Email the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com
