Rock Health published yesterday their 2015 annual Digital Health Funding report, and perhaps it is good news that 2015 activity maintained the blazing 2014 total at $4.3 bn. Still, it represents a compound annual growth (CAGR) from 2011-2015 of 30 percent.
Consumer digital health is thriving, with healthcare consumer engagement, personal health tools and tracking accounting for 23 percent of overall funding. Two of the six largest deals were won by consumer-driven genetic companies, 23andMe and Helix.
The one new record was that there were 278 deals across 248 companies, with an record-breaking average deal size of $15.6m. What continued is that the vast majority of funding deals (70 percent) were Series B and below, but C and C+ deals increased slightly. It was also a big year for exits. M&A activity nearly doubled in volume with 180 deals and $6B in disclosed activity. Their index comprising shares of publicly traded digital health companies was off over 5 percent with two of this year’s IPOs trading lower than their opening prices.
According to the Rock Health newsletter, early-funded companies had a few zombies among them. Rock Health looked at companies up to five years ago, and found that 11 percent they classified as either dead or “zombies” (which have not raised a round in 3+ years). “Most likely to die? A disproportionate number of these zombie companies are in the care coordination, EHR, or clinical workflow space.”
The web page with a link to the full study is here. Unfortunately, the download is not free, but $99.
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