2013 Digital Health Funding Report

As we ring in the New Year, we are proud to publish our third comprehensive year-end report on funding in digital health.

Since we published our first report in 2011, digital health funding has more than doubled. In addition to detailing the state of venture funding (the entrepreneurs, the investors, the trends), this latest report also highlights crowdfunding trends and public markets.

More growth in 2013

In 2013, digital health funding smashed records — exceeding $1.9B with 195 venture deals ($2M+). Funding was up 39% from 2012 and 119% compared to 2011. In 2014,  the digital health industry is set to surpass total medical device venture funding.

The major themes of 2013 comprise nearly 50% of all funding for the entire year

Six themes emerged in 2013, representing nearly 50% of all funding. The largest theme continues to be electronic health records and their surrounding applications.

Entrepreneurs continue to find their way to California and the Bay Area to build their digital health companies

In 2013, California continued to dominate as  homebase for funded startups, with over a third of all deals taking place in the golden state.  Massachusetts (19) and New York (10) followed.

Serial investors tripled from 2012

While we continued to see investors “dabbling” in digital health (just 1 deal), the amount of “serial investors” (3+ deals) tripled from 2012 to 2013.   While the past was indicative of a learning phase, we’re now seeing more firms define and execute a strategy for investing in digital health. 32% of the digital health dabblers from 2012 invested again in 2013, with eight joining the ranks of serial investors.

The six most active investors of the year are a mixed bunch — three are primarily tech VCs, two are corporate VCs, and one is a life science / healthcare VCs.

Tech investors: Social+Capital Partnership (7), Norwest Venture Partners (6 deals),  Khosla Ventures (4)
Corporate VCs: Qualcomm (4), Merck (4)
Life Science / Healthcare: Cardinal Partners (4)

Dive into the full report here.