Rock Health, the full-service seed fund provider that supports startups working in health technology, has revealed through a year end study that 2014 saw venture funding for digital health companies surpass $4.1 billion, almost the total of all three prior years combined charting a 125% YoY growth in funding compared to 2013.
Rock Health revealed in a post on their blog earlier last week that a total of 295 deals were signed with an average deal size of $14.1M, marking an increase of nearly 40% YoY.
“The top six categories that accounted for 44% of all digital health funding in 2014 were analytics and big data, healthcare consumer engagement, digital medical devices, telemedicine, personalized medicine, and population health management. Personalized medicine, defined as software used to support the practice of medicine customized to an individual’s genetics, slid into the top six for the very first time this year. This growth in funding could be attributable to the technological innovations in both genomics and data analysis in recent years. The other five categories continue to see strong funding as a result of the changing healthcare legislative and reimbursement environment,” the blog explained.
2014 witnessed an almost three times increase in investors with 344 as compared to only 2011’s 121. The study further points out that “there’s a growing group of serial investors establishing themselves in the space, with 55% of the serial investors of 2013 continuing to do 3+ deals in 2014.” It turns out that the most active investors in digital health include corporate, healthcare, technology, and agnostic venture funds.
Read more here.
(Image credit: Lew Holzman)
