Insights from digital health’s most active investors

Last Friday we co-hosted the third annual Digital Health Investor Summit with Fenwick and West to a packed audience of investors specifically interested in the digital health space. Here are some of the day’s memorable moments:

1. “Data is like air—it’s necessary, but you can’t sell anyone two ounces of it.” -David Brailer of Health Evolution Partners on collecting more and more data points, without creating value
2. “It finally doesn’t suck. Technology can do video much better, waiting time is almost instantaneous, you can close the loop by connecting to pharmacy, and the market has really expanded with everyone having smartphones.” -Bob Kocher, Venrock on why telemedicine is so hot right now
3. “The 5 Customer Journeys that matter: browse and shop, evolve with my needs, help me help myself, take control of my health, and help me in my time of need.” -Janet Widmann, Executive VP of Markets for Blue Shield of CA on the kinds of technologies payers are interested in investing in
4. “Differentiated tech models are more important than ever” -Navtej Bhullar, Goldman Sachs on key investor perspectives from recent IPOs
5. “Investors should focus on optimizing all the 4 P’s (patient, physician, provider & payer)” -Casper de Clercq, Norwest Venture Partners on whether high valuations will hold
6. “It’s not about disruption, it’s about implementation.” -Jack Young, dRx Capital on how digital health companies are performing compared to other portfolio companies

Rock Health’s Malay Gandhi ran an interactive session regarding The State of Digital Health Funding (you can check out a breakdown here). The audience was live-polled on their feelings about the digital health investment landscape. Here are some results:

Sales cycles are the biggest concerns for digital health investors

Digital health investors believe companies are currently overvalued

And finally—on the bullishness of digital health investors: