Mercom: Investors poured $2.5 billion into digital health last quarter

By Jonah Comstock
02:29 pm
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Digital health companies raised $2.5 billion in VC funding in the first quarter of 2018, according to a new report from Mercom Capital Group. Mercom says the quarter, with 187 deals, is only the second since 2010 to top $2 billion.

“Digital Health VC is off to a record start in 2018 with $2.5 billion beating the previous record of $2.4 billion from Q2 2017. Several large deals over $100 million pushed the funding total up in the quarter, with activity powered by over 400 investors,” Raj Prabhu, CEO and cofounder of Mercom Capital Group, said in a statement.

Mercom’s total falls between Rock Health’s $1.62 billion figure and Startup Health’s $2.8 billion. Once again, the difference can be attributed to a lack of consensus on exactly which companies fall under the banner of digital health.

While Mercom’s report has data analytics and clinical decision support as the two top-funded categories with $679 million and $516 million respectively, mobile health apps also did well with $247 million, as did telemedicine with $178 million.

The biggest individual deal was Heartflow’s $240 million round, followed by Helix’s $200 million and $200 million for clinical diagnostics company SomaLogic.

Mercom tracked deals by 412 investors supporting companies in 24 countries. Mercom also tracked 48 mergers and acquisitions over the course of the quarter.

It was a good quarter for the healthcare sector in general, with US healthcare companies raising a combined $6.85 billion in venture capital, according to a report out yesterday from Dow Jones VentureSource. Healthcare made up 26.6 percent of all investment dollars, a bigger share than any other industry.

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