During USC's 2014 Body Computing Conference,
experts agreed that digital health funding is accelerating beyond that of
traditional healthcare. According to Rock Health (a company that provides
startups with funding and full-service support), digital health is one of the
fastest growing niches overall in venture funding today and is attracting
investors from several different areas. Unexpectedly, it is surpassing medical
devices in aggregate funding.
Casper de Clercq, a partner at Norwest Venture
Partners, a leading investor in medical device firms, pointed to a trend in
data collection. “There are other industries that are way ahead. Walmart,
Target, Amazon, and Google know way more about our healthcare and our health
situation than probably most of our providers do.” He mentioned the famous case
of a Target store discovering that a customer was pregnant simply by monitoring
her buying habits.
Malay Gandhi, managing director of seed fund Rock Health, stated that
large medical device companies are transforming their business models from a
pure hardware business into a services business. “Technology enabled services
in this category, where the medical device becomes a data acquisition
mechanism, and you have software, analytics, and a services or patient management
platform is really the future of medical devices.”
References:
http://www.mddionline.com/article/venture-investment-digital-health-surpasses-medical-devices-141006
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