2019 Midyear digital health market update: Exits are heating up

$4.2B was invested in digital health through the first half of 2019. The sector continues to experience healthy growth—we still don’t see the telltale signs of an investment bubble. Here we take stock of the capital invested in digital health startups since 2011—$29.4B of which is waiting on liquidity. We examine two avenues to return this capital: public offerings and acquisition by large non-healthcare companies.

Nominate a patient, caregiver, or advocate to attend Rock Health Summit 2019

Do you know or care for someone with a chronic illness, disease, or injury whose health experience has been impacted by technology? Their voices are integral to the conversations we have at Rock Health Summit. Like last year, we’re excited and honored to offer a handful of nominees complimentary passes to our eighth annual event.

Innovation in treating chronic pain requires new measures

As a second state pursues legal action against makers and distributors of opioid painkillers, the focus has continued to be on overdose deaths from prescription opioids, now averaging 46 per day. Often overlooked in this conversation is the broader epidemic—the 50M U.S. adults who suffer from chronic pain, of which, more than 19.6M Americans are thought to have high-impact chronic pain (i.e., pain that frequently limits life or work activities).

Podcast: Navigating pharma-digital therapeutic alliances

The industry is at a unique crossroads: pharmaceutical and digital therapeutic (DTx) companies have begun to act on their ambition to advance digital therapeutics—but the path to successful alliances and, importantly, scale remains uncertain. As a follow up to our recent research on building pharma-DTx alliances, we sat down with two leaders to get their perspective

Podcast: The promises and potential pitfalls of telemedicine

In 2018, digital health companies leveraging telemedicine received nearly $1.5B in investment. And although telemedicine adoption has grown across the board in recent years, the majority of users remain the urban and the young. How are different healthcare stakeholders thinking about tackling barriers to adoption, potential limitations of virtual care, and the evergreen question—how telemedicine should be paid for?

Podcast: The current state of digital health regulation

In 2017, the FDA launched its Digital Health Pre-Certification Program, also known as Pre-Cert, to work with innovators to develop a new approach to regulatory oversight for software-based medical technologies. Nearly two years into the pilot program, we wanted to get a status update and hear what’s in store for the program this year and beyond.

Patterns in capital concentration among digital health startups

We've reported record levels of funding for digital health in four of the past five years. Q1 2019 shows signs that funding is leveling off compared to 2018's record-smashing $8.1B total. Here we take a deeper look at patterns in capital concentration in digital health. We line up our analysis with insights from Michael Greeley, our good friend who explored the trend towards capital concentration in VC overall in his recent blog post.

Imagining a world free of diabetic foot ulcers: Our investment in Podimetrics

Since 2012, Podimetrics has worked tirelessly on a remote patient monitoring (RPM) solution to tackle the devastating problem of diabetic foot ulcers. With clinically validated sensor technology and care coordination, Podimetrics is now launching its product to additional commercial payers and at-risk providers. We’re thrilled to announce our participation in Podimetrics’ $13.4M Series B.

Life after Lantern: All Mental Health wants to make evidence-based mental health resources accessible by all

Lantern, a digital mental health company that became part of Rock Health’s portfolio in 2013, wound down its customer operations in July 2018. The startup had raised over $20M in its lifetime, and supported individuals experiencing anxiety, depression, and disordered eating. “The biggest reason we were unable to scale our services was we didn’t focus on one market,” explains Lantern co-founder and former CEO Alejandro Foung.

The future of healthcare is in the cloud: Announcing our partnership with Google Cloud

Our conviction that innovation requires elevating both digital health entrepreneurs and enterprise leaders is a key reason we’re thrilled to announce our newest corporate partner, Google Cloud.

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